Blogger gets 150,000 SEK for citizen journalism wiki

Swedish blogger Oscar Swartz gets 150,000 kronor from IIS, the public trust that manages the Swedish top domain .se. He gets the grant in order to expand his blog with a wiki to make it a centre for citizen journalism.

Swartz writes:

“Med inspiration från exempelvis Wikipedia och det som kallas “citizen journalism” kommer jag att starta ett projekt för att försöka kanalisera den här aktiviteten till någonting som jag kallar Medborgarjournalistik. Man kanske kan se idén som en “journalistisk tankesmedja som arbetar med Open Source-tänkandet som grund” och som har ämnet fri kommunikation som grundläggande tema och intresse. Tanken är att dra igång en Wiki-baserad sajt där kunskapen skall kunna växa fram och ackumuleras med hjälp av många användares insatser.”

In short, he hopes to build a wiki based site for open-source collective reporting, perhaps similar to what Jay Rosen is working on with his project NewAssignment.net.

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Blogs and podcasts on Sweden.se

The Swedish Institute runs Sweden.se, “the official gateway to Sweden”. Today the site also includes links to 9 Swedish blogs and podcasts written in English, and Media Culpa is one of them.

The other 8 are:

456 Berea St
andreasviklund.com
Annes Food
How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons
Karin’s Style Blog
Letters to Marc Jacobs
NoisedFisk
Polarbear Podcast

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Companies that don’t “get” the web

Stationsvakt writes about Coop and its out-dated linking policy in which the company wants to control the style and typeface of any incoming links to its website. I can’t even manage to write something sarcastic about this attitude. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very hard to find other examples of silly linking policies (In Swedish, sorry) where companies demand that you seek their written consent prior to any linking.

ACNielsen:
Länkar kan endast ha formen av text och får endast ha beteckningen “ACNielsen.”

Meca, a retailer in automotive parts:
Länkning till Meca.se får endast ske efter Meca Scandinavia AB:s föregående skriftliga medgivande.

TT-Line, the ferry-service company:
Länkning till dessa sidor får endast göras efter godkännande från TT-Line.

(TT-Line should consider tidying up their website. The Dutch, French and German versions all link to the German domain, but in English.)

Update 31 Oct: Coop have now updated their link policy. Via Fyra nyanser av brunt.

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Wikipedia in top ten Google results for Sweden’s top brands

If you have an idea for a blog post, don’t sit on it for a month because if it’s a good idea, some other blogger will post before you do. A month ago I planned to do a similar study that Steve Rubel did regarding the largest advertisers and how high Wikipedia entries rank in the Google search results. I did the search but I just haven’t come around to publish it.

So instead I suggest that you have a look at Richard Gatarski’s very thorough investigation and report (in Swedish) that he published yesterday. He has done a good job and checked the 60 largest advertisers in Sweden and on average, Wikipedia entries came up before the company website. The average Google rank for Wikipedia articles was 9, which means they are in the important top ten results. For Coca-Cola, Hennes & Mauritz och Biersdorf, Wikipedia articles are as high as #1.

My results pointed in the same direction. I checked Sweden’s ten largest advertisers during Jan-June 2006 and 6 out of 10 are in the top ten results [search performed on Sept 17].

Unilever 7
Telia 14
KF 8
Ica 8
Volkswagen 16 (Volkswagen Beetle 14)
Volvo 7
Cosmetique France – (L’Oréal 7)
Viasat 14 (Viasat Sport 10)
Föreningssparbanken 11
Tre 28

[Found via Mymarkup.]

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Edelman PR in fake blog controversy

PR agency Edelman has been under intense fire the last few days for being involved in a pro-Wal-Mart blog, but not being open about who the sponsor is. MediaPost writes about the blog called “Wal-Marting Across America”:

“The blog, launched Sept. 27, was profiled in this week’s issue of BusinessWeek, which exposed the site as a promotional tactic engineered by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart’s public relations firm Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV [Recreational Vehicle ]and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip’s original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV’s side. Though a banner ad announced WFWM sponsored the site, it did not divulge Wal-Mart paid for the couple’s RV, gas, food and other expenses.”

fake walmart blog

It took a few days until Richard Edelman responded with an apology.

“I want to acknowledge our error in failing to be transparent about the identity of the two bloggers from the outset. This is 100% our responsibility and our error; not the client’s.”

Constantin Basturea has a good set of comments from the PR blogosphere. See also Kevin O’Keefe.

[Cartoon: courtesy of Gaping Void.]