Media Culpa

MotherJones.com writes about George W. Bush’s inaugural address and apart from the political comments, the article is a ruthless dressing-down of the American press.

“In a world where Gaia — the Earth as a single throbbing organism — is already a cliché; where “globalization” remains a buzzword; and where we happen to be ruled by the greatest geopolitical dreamers and gamblers in our history, our demobilized media treats the world, if at all, as a set of hopeless fragments and just doesn’t consider puzzling them together part of the job description. If you want to grasp our world as it is, you might actually have to click off that TV, use your local paper to wrap the fish, and head for the Internet.”

I’m so not going to start with this, because I know I wouldn’t be able to stop. Blogshares is a “fantasy stock market where weblogs are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in blogs. Blogs are valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog.”

Here’s how my blog is doing, currently valued at $71 (is that good or bad?). A bunch of other Swedish blogs are in the game, like Patrick Strang, Stefan Geens and Erik Stattin. And you need to picht in $160 to get a share of Annica Tiger.

Reporters Without Borders are accepting nominations for “outstanding examples of blogs defending free expression”. The organisation will compile a shortlist from which online users vote to choose the best. The motive behind the awards:

“We want to draw attention to the importance of weblogs in countries where the traditional press is under the control of the authorities. Throughout the world, Internet users are adopting this new tool to combat censorship and circulate independent news and information.”

Nominees should have been up and running for at least six months and not belong to a governmental or non-governmental organisation.

Link via Yelah.

Free papers in metropolitan areas increase their circulation at the expense of their paid colleagues. Stockholm City increased circulation 32% to 531,000 readers last fall compared to the same period in 2003 and at this pace will be larger than Göteborgs-Posten in the next survey. Metro Stockholm gained 8% to 681,000.

Traditional (paid) dailies like Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet drop in circulation, DN down 2% to 897,000 and SvD down 2% to 468,000. Malmö-based Sydsvenskan drops 1% to 198,000 while Gotheburg’s Göteborgs-Posten increases 3% to 577,000 readers.

The tabloid Expressen is closing in on rival Aftonbladet. Expressen is up 2% to 1,207,000 readers while Aftonbladet is more or less stable at 1,425,000 readers.

All according to Orvesto research published in Dagens Media.

If your car breaks down, cross your fingers it won’t do it on a Sunday. I came to think of this as I read Chris Anderson’s blog The Long Tail. He writes about the long tail concept as something that emerged in two steps, the first being “the abundance boom of the 1990s that arrived with an explosion of variety on supermarket shelves”. The exploding supply of a wide range of consumer products even made it difficult for consumers – how could you choose between 150 kinds of toothpaste or 273 versions of cereal? It even introduced the concept of the “tyranny of choice” .

In many ways that’s true in most industrialized nations, but in other cases the interaction between the market forces supply and demand are not working properly. Last week my car wouldn’t start because the battery had gone to meet the battery maker, and it was time to buy a new one. Problem was that it was Sunday and the retailers I knew about that sell auto parts were closed. Idiot that I am, I borrowed a car from a friend and went to the nearest gas station thinking that I could easily get one there, but gas stations today hardly sell any products with a connection to vehicles. Instead, antifreeze fluids and wiper blades are hidden behind racks of the latest DVD’s, freshly baked cinnamon rolls and four isles of groceries.

At my first stop, they had batteries but they didn’t carry one that fit my Saab 9-5, Sweden’s third most common car brand. At my second stop they only had a few different batteries left, none which fit my car. At my third stop I struck gold, i.e. they could offer me the choice of one battery at the reasonable price of 800 SEK (about 90 euro).

And it’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere, I live in a suburb to Stockholm, in a city with the third highest average income in Sweden so if I want to spend my money on a product I expect that I would have a few choices on where to spend them. Not so in Sweden. The same goes for clothing and several other consumer products. Have you ever tried to buy winter overalls for your kids in December? Impossible, all the good ones are taken. Another example, I am tall and skinny and tried to buy a pair of black corduroy pants in January, which I guess is pretty late in the season and had to go to a bunch of stores to find a pair that fit. And if you wanted the best Christmas presents, don’t wait until the last week to buy that cool Spider Man game, or you might be stuck with a geeky animal puzzle. I could go on and on.

One could argue that gas stations get a higher revenue from selling DVD’s than from selling batteries, but if they won’t do it, consumer demand should allow someone else to. After all, there are 4 million cars in use in Sweden and they all need new batteries once every few years. Question is why there is no “tyranny of choice” in the Swedish market for so many products. One answer could be that there are so few of us in this country that companies can’t satisfy all our needs. If someone wants to buy a new iPod on Sunday night, tough, stores are closed.

Another answer would be that there isn’t enough competition. A few companies become so dominant that they own their niche and create a niche monopoly in which they don’t have to serve all the needs of the consumers. Consumers will have to suffice with what’s being served, and to a higher price. In the latest issue of Swedish business weekly Veckans Affärer, there’s an article about price levels in Europe, and according to Eurostat Sweden has the third highest prices in Europe. A portion of this can be explained with a lack of competition. Writes Veckans Affärer: “Increased competition would result in lower prices”. Hopefully increased competition would also give consumers more choices or the long tail will only be something we read about in Wired.