Category: Media & Journalism

Swedish media about Richard Florida

Swedish media aren’t entirely buying Richard Florida’s praise of Sweden as the most creative country on the planet . Below are a some links (in Swedish) to articles about Florida’s recent visit to Sweden.

Dagens Nyheter
Expressen
Göteborgs-Posten 1 and 2
Stockholm City
Svenska Dagbladet 1 and 2
Sydsvenskan

It’s probably not related, but I found this to be an interesting survey, a new study on countries and national pride. Sweden is at the very bottom of the 33 countries surveyed.

Americans and Venezuelans lead the world in national pride by Smith and Kim. In the report, Smith and Kim write: Sweden’s low placement reflects the fact that Swedes tend to associate national pride with nationalistic extremism and racism.

Except when it comes to sports, that is…

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Milk PR stunt turns sour

Mjölkfrämjandet is an organization sponsored by the milk industry and that promotes milk consumption in Sweden. They recently made a PR survey of fifteen-year-olds’ drinking habits in school, the results were then split into different Swedish provinces. And the PR stunt was very successful with media coverage in many local newspapers. But some of these journalists must know something about math that I don’t, because how can kids in both Halland, Gotland, Medelpad, Jämtland and Norrbotten all be the ones who drink most milk? Check this out, five headlines from five different regions claiming they have the students who like milk the most:

Hallandsposten:
Halländska killar dricker mest mjölk
15-åriga killar i Halland dricker mer mjölk än jämnåriga i övriga delar av landet. Det visar en undersökning som Mjölkfrämjandet gjort genom den populära webbplatsen Lunarstorm. […] 59 procent av killarna dricker mjölk, av tjejerna väljer bara 44 procent mjölk till maten.

Gotlands Allehanda:
Gotländska elever toppar “mjölkligan”
81 procent av killarna och 58 procent av tjejerna på Gotland dricker mjölk till skolmaten. Därmed dricker fler gotländska elever mer mjölk än eleverna i övriga landet.

Sundsvalls Tidning:
Ungdomar i Medelpad etta på mjölk
Hela 75 procent av 15-åringarna i Medelpad dricker mjölk till skolmaten. De
siffrorna visar att ungdomarna är bäst i landet på den vita, näringsrika drycken.

Sveriges Radio Jämtland:
Jämtländska killar är bäst i Sverige på att dricka mjölk.
I varje fall om man får tro en undersökning på ungdomssajten Lunarstorm om dryckesvanor i skolmatsalen. Mjölk är den överlägset populäraste måltidsdrycken bland 15-åringarna i Jämtland, och allra mest dricker alltså killar. 92 procent av dem säger att de dricker mjölk till skolmaten, vilket kan jämföras med bara 61 procent av tjejerna i Jämtland.

Norrländska Socialdemokraten:
Norrbottens unga toppar mjölkligan
Ungdomar i Norrbotten dricker mer mjölk än ungdomar i övriga landet. Det visar en färsk undersökning från Mjölkfrämjandet. […] 72 procent av pojkarna och 55 procent av flickorna väljer mjölk till måltidsdryck

But the kids in Närke was “worst”:

Sveriges Radio Örebro:
Eleverna i Närke är sämst i landet på att dricka mjölk till skolmaten.
Det visar en undersökning som ungdomssajten Lunarstorm, på internet, har gjort. 41 procent av eleverna i Närke dricker mjölk i skolan. Genomsnittet för hela landet är 54 procent.

The confusion continues, but it seems that (pdf) kids in Medelpad are the heaviest milk drinkers (75%) while boys in Jämtland drink milk more often than any other region, so Sundsvalls Tidning and SR Jämtland seem to be the two that got it right.

I don’t know if the different press releases implied that all regions “won” or if it was sloppy journalism, but it’s not rare that headlines overinterpret an article to the extent that the claim is false.

“Expressen-blogger” used to be an invective

I’ve been away for a week of alpine skiing and I’m ready to pick up the blog again. Here are a few things worth mentioning from the last week.

– Blog Buzz Helps Companies Catch Trends in the Making. [Via Marcus]

“By trawling in cyberspace, ConAgra sensed that consumer interest in portable snack foods is growing as people’s schedules get busier, the kind of intelligence that helps guide expensive decisions on research and development of new products.”

– Jay Rosen has a new project called Blue Plate Special. In the first issue he and a group of students have studied the Best Blogging Newspapers in the U.S. Top six are:

1. Houston Chronicle (128 points)
2. Washington Post (69 points)
3. USA Today (38 points, 1 honorable mention)
4. St. Petersburg Times (29 points, 2 honorable mention)
5. Atlanta Journal-Constitution (23 points)
6. San Antonio Express-News (22 points, 1 honorable mention)

– Readers have started 700 blogs just a few days after Expressen launched its blog service. It’s interesting to see that some established bloggers have launched mirror blogs on Expressen.se just to increase traffic to the “real blog”. What happened to the tabloids-are-evil standpoint? (And remember in 2005 when Expressen-blogger was an invective?)

Social Democrat behind email campaign analyzed latest election

Fredrik Reinfeldt, the leader of the Swedish Moderate party, has been the target of a dirty email campaign containing false accusations. The person behind the emails turned out to be a senior employee in the Social Democratic Party and one of Prime Minister Göran Persson’s closest men. According to media reports he was responsible for analyzing opinion polls.

But he did more than that. He was one of eight people in a committee that analyzed (pdf) the latest election – the 2004 election to the EU Parliament. The group came up with suggestions for future elections based on the analysis. He was in other words a central figure in the party’s campaign strategy planning.

“Valresultatet i EU-parlamentsvalet den 13 juni 2004 blev mycket sämre än vad vi hade förväntat oss och långt under de mål vi ställt upp, både när det gäller valdeltagandet och vårt eget resultat. Det låga valdeltagandet är något vi delar med många länder runt om i unionen, det är också fler partier i vårt land som har anledning att fundera över resultatet.

Men trots det finns det skäl för oss socialdemokrater att göra en egen noggrann analys av valresultatet. Inte minst för att systematisera våra erfarenheter, både organisatoriska och politiska, till nästa riksdagsval 2006.“

Jyllands-Posten apologizes

Last September, the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 drawings of the Prophet Mohammed, which sparked anger among Muslims in Denmark and abroad. The degrading caricatures were later reprinted in a Norwegian magazine (in defense of free speech), causing a boycott of Danish and Norwegian products in the Arab world. The Danish-Swedish dairy producer Arla even paid for an ad in Saudi Arabian newspapers, in order to “stop the boycott from escalating”. As of yesterday, Arla products were off the shelves in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait and many other nations.

Late last night Jyllands-Posten issued an apology, not for publishing the drawings, but for the fact that the drawings offended Muslims! It’s a hazardous strategy, not to apologize for you own actions, but apologize for the reactions of the offended part. I guess the reason is that an apology for the actual publication would be seen as caving in to external pressure and in the long run a threat to the freedom of speech.

“They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologize.”

The same strategy was used in Norway:

In Norway, a foreign ministry spokesman denied media reports that the government had asked its diplomats to apologize to Muslim countries.

“We have not asked our diplomats to apologize for the publication of these cartoons, but to apologize for the agitation they have created,” she said, according to Norway’s NTB news agency.

It will be interesting to see if this apology will be enough to make this issue go away.

(By the way, maybe a pop-up for a net survey shouldn’t be what greets readers that click on the link to the apology.)

Metro to open in 17 new cities

Metro logo

The Swedish free daily newspaper Metro will start distribution in 17 new cities in Sweden, according to an article in Svenska Dagbladet. Kalmar, Växjö, Halmstad, Umeå, Luleå and Sundsvall are some of the candidates. Metro have declined to comment on the information.

Metro announced today that its global daily readership is up 22% to 18.5 million readers. Metro now has 59 editions in 19 countries.