Two Swedish Eyes on Media and Public Relations
Editors Weblog writes that the Washington Post and the Guardian have added sponsored blog rolls to their sites.
“Although the Post hasn’t – yet – made a significant amount of money from its blog roll, Adify (which supplies the ad network technology) claims the blog roll has increased the site’s audience by more than 50%.”
Alex Schulman has become a poster boy for online harassment. His blog at Aftonbladet has become Sweden’s most visited professional blog (there are other blogs with more visitors) through his provocative style which culminated with the recent criticsim of his Aftonbladet colleague Jan-Olov Andersson.
Today Schulman writes that he will no longer continue to update this blog becuase the “blog has grown into a monster” which makes him feel bad.
“I read what I have written about celebrities and I feel disgusted by myself,” he writes.
Perhaps it was the row with his colleague, or the criticism from the Press Ombudsman Yrsa Stenius in Svenska Dagbladet yesterday. Or the article by his mother in Expressen yesterday:
“The blog phenomenon Alex is not my boy, the Alexander I know,” she wrote.
Either way, there is still hope for the blogosphere…
Update: I forgot to add, that this should serve as a reminder to those who are quick to put a price tag on blogs. About a month ago, it was estimated that Schulman’s blog could generate as much as 28.7 million kronor in ad revenue per year. And now it’s going to shut down. Blogs can be instant hits, but also disappear in a split second.
Politikerbloggen, the political blog that TV4 yesterday purchased, has been nominated for the award as the best Swedish online journal. The award was established by FSN, Föreningen för Sveriges Nättidskrifter (The Association of Swedish Online Journals), and will be handed out on Sept 28 at the Swedish book fair 2007. Interestingly enough, that is also when FSN will decide if it shall cease to exist as an association.
The other nominees are:
Bisonblog (Go Fredrik!)
Bloggywood
Forskning.se
NummerSalongen
Tags: online journals, Politikerbloggen, tidskrifter, bloggar. Ping.
Swedish TV4 recruits the former Expressen journalist Niklas Svensson and buys his new political blog Politikerbloggen for an estimated 1 million kronor (about 108,000 euro).
The site has 20,000 visitors per week, according to Svensson and has sold advertising space since May for 450,000 kronor. The blog has quickly established itself as a political force to be reckoned with and it is currently the fifth most linked to Swedish blog according to Bloggportalen.se.
Politikerbloggen has been quoted with several scoops in traditional media, but not very often by TV4 – only once (online that is). Dagens Media (29), Expressen (23), Resumé (21), Aftonbladet (15) and Metro (15) are the media that most frequently mention Politikerbloggen.
Tags: tv4, Politikerbloggen, tv4, bloggar. Ping.
Daily newspapers in southern Sweden will start to link articles to blog comments with the Twingly service. At least if Joakim Jardenberg gets his way. Jardenberg is Managing Director of Mindpark, a new development corporation owned by Bonniers in Skåne, Gota Media, Helsingborgs Dagblad and NWT.
– We should take the blogosphere seriously. SvD (Svenska Dagbladet), DN (Dagens Nyheter) and IDG have all seen positive effects of using Twingly, he tells Medievärlden.
Joakim Jardenberg also says he believes strongly in mashups with existing services developed by other sites like Google, Facebook and Wikipedia.
[Republished post, the original must have been accidentally deleted. Sorry for the inconvenience]
The blog of Sweden’s Foreign Minster Carl Bildt has become a question for Konstitutionsutskottet (KU), the Parliamentary Committee on the Constitution, writes Riksdag & Departement. Bildt’s blog is subject to an investigation by the prosecutor because Bildt did not remove hateful comments to some of his blog posts earlier this year. And before the prosecutor continues with the preliminary investigation, he wants KU to determine whether Bildt is blogging as a minister or as a private individual. If he is blogging as a minister, then KU will determine if he is to be prosecuted or not.
According to Swedish law it is the responsibility of the site owner to remove hateful comments “within reasonable time”. Bildt has declared that he knew about the comments and that he found them “very inappropriate”. But he did not remove them with the explanation that they were archived anyway. The comments were finally removed later in the spring.
Initially the blog was launched as a private blog, but when Bildt became a minister in the new right wing goverment he added a link to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs’ website which also registers all the posts on the blog as public documents.
During the 200 years that KU has existed it has only decided to prosecute a minister once, and that was in the 1850’s.
Tags: carl bildt, sweden, blogg, carld bildt, bloggar. Ping.