Wikipedia a trusted source for Swedish media

At 2 PM today, Fredrik Reinfeldt was elected new Prime Minister of Sweden. When Aftonbladet reports about his career to date, they go to Wikipedia to find background information. This practice has become more common the last year or so. Göteborgs-Posten did it earlier this week and SVT did it a week ago. In spite of the recent critisism against the accuracy of Wikipedia, more and more journalists rely on it as a trustworthy source. And no wonder, Wikipedia did well in an accuracy test against the Encyclopedia Britannica last year.

Here is a chart that reveals the number of articles in which Wikipedia has been mentioned in Swedish online media 2004-2006. Source: Retriever.

wikipedia

Footnote: the graph above of course also includes articles about Wikipedia as such.

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Dagens Media publishes rumours

I’m fascinated by the fact that communications weekly Dagens Media has started to publish rumours. Isn’t that what bloggers are for? Before this article about a new Managing Director for Edelman UFO in Sweden, the paper states that the information is not verified (Obekräftad info). So much for the editorial process…

And how long should a rumour be allowed to be up on the website before it is confirmed? The bitter rival Resumé publishes all the facts in the story a few hours later, but Dagens Media has still not updated yesterday’s article.

Anyway, congratulations to my former colleague Marianne Bäärnhielm to a new job, and congrats to Edelman UFO for a great recruitment.

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An abundance of new Swedish media

The dust has barely settled after yesterday’s launch of the new free daily Punkt SE, when yet another newspaper sees the light of day – Täby Danderyd Tidning, a bi-weekly local paper for the two cities Täby and Danderyd north of Stockholm. But this is not part of the current free daily craze that has hit the Nordic countries, no T&D; is a subscribed morning paper. While I admit that this part of greater Stockholm is in what could be considered “media shadow”, I admire their guts. The competition is stiff with three free dailies currently being handed out across the region and one (Mitt i Täby) being distributed directly to the local households. T&D; aims to be the leading local paper in the region within five years, and who knows, stranger things have happened.

täby danderyd tidning

mitt i täby

And while we are on the subject of new media investments, Aftonbladet today revealed the name for its new tv channel – TV7. Starting next Monday they threaten us with “Aftonbladet in a tv format”.

What is surprising is that Aftonbladet two days in a row have launched new media projects that they don’t own the domain names for. Punkt.se is owned by Spray and TV7.se has been owned by a company called Esias Consulting KB since 2001 (contact name Svante Tegnér, the über-brat of Stockholm city). Esias Consulting KB lost a legal dispute for the domain sportnytt.se to SVT in 2003, but that was an old brand. TV7 is brand new and such a dispute may not be as easy to win for Aftonbladet.

24nt launched

24nt Let’s hope this is the last media project with “24” in the title (please?) At 6 PM this evening, local daily Norrköpings Tidningar launched its new local tv channel 24nt. The channel can be accessed via cabel-tv, Ip-tv, web-tv, pod-tv and terrestrial digital tv. 24nt will be a news channel that runs in 20 minute formats, consisting of 10 minutes of news and sports, 2 minutes of weather and information, two one-minute blocks of commercials and 6 minutes of other programmes.

Other “24s”: 24timer, NA24, N24, SVT24 and so on…

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