Media Culpa

Dagens Industri today writes about a new poll that claims that the left for the first time in a year and a half has support of a larger percentage of the Swedish population than the right.

It can be a healthy reminder to see that, with the exception of 1991, sympathies for the left are down between elections but manages to climb up during the election year. [Insert conspiracy theory of your own choice here.]

Source: SOM-institutet (pdf). Question: It is sometimes said that political opinions can be placed on a scale from left to right. Where would you place yourself on such a left-right scale?

In Sweden, one corporate blog after another is being shut down. But in the US, patent lawyer Dennis Crouch “blawg” Patently-O brings in some serious business to his law firm.

“The first job came two months into the blog’s life, when a small software development company hired Crouch to do patent prosecution.”

“Crouch has also landed work for his firm prosecuting business-method patents and was hired by a group of hedge-fund analysts to advise them on the recently settled patent suit against the maker of the BlackBerry. All told, Crouch says blog readers have brought the firm “less than $1 million” worth of business.”

Tags: Public Relations, PR, corporate blog, blawg.

File under “to good to be true”. Dagens Nyheter’s columnist Peter Wolodarski today writes a piece about Swedish banks and their fees for managing funds. He calls it “bank robbery” and that the fees are a “continuing theft”.

On the opposite side in the paper is Avanza’s much discussed advertising campaign for its new fund savings offer where customers can invest in funds without any charges whatsoever. Is this what is called integrated communication?

Tags: Public Relations, PR, advertising.

Metro launches a weekly entertainment guide with calendars and tips for the weekend. The paper will be distributed on cafés and bars in Stockholm on Fridays and the first issue is due tomorrow. Resumé has a dummy of the front page here.

– The circulation will be significantly lower than Metro’s, editor-in-chief Sakari Pitkänen tells Dagens Media.

The paper will cover topics like restaurants, movies, shopping and sex and the planned distribution will be between 12,000 and 15,000 copies. As Vassa Eggen points out, how will this affect Metro’s co-operation with Nöjesguiden, the leading free entertainment publication?

The trend towards entertainment and gossip “journalism” continues. Just last week, news agency TT Spektra announced they will start a new section called Bling, that will cover celebrities, fashion and entertainment.

The New York Magazine writes a story on the Kaavya Viswanathan case and plagiarism, that is 99% plagiarized.

“With the endless stories about the Kaavya Viswanathan case, and thinking about the plague of plagiarism, we decided to write a piece about plagiarism that is plagiarized. David Edelstein, our film critic, conceived of this idea and tracked down 20 articles on the subject of plagiarism pegged to various scandals. Then he did a big cut-and-paste job and wrote a denunciation of plagiarism that is roughly 99% plagiarized.”

Very meta, indeed. It’s like doing a coffee table book about coffee tables (in fact, I saw that Seinfeld episode last night…) [Via Media Orchard.]