Category: Other

If you think the advertising market is in a slump, maybe this will cheer you up.

• The commercial tv channel TV3 increased its sales with 15 per cent (reg. required) during the first six months 2004.
• The four Swedish telecom operators Telia, Tele 2, Vodaphone and “3” spent roughly 65 million euro on advertising the first half of 2004 (in gross spending), an increase with 65 per cent, reports Svenska Dagbladet. Competition is fierce and “3” tripled their spending compared to the same period last year, due to the launch of its 3G service.

I recently wrote about accusations of plagiarism at Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter. And now new accusations are made, this time in Norway. Blogger and media critic Lars Ruben Hirsch accuses (in Norwegian) Aftenposten of copying an article from Newsweek without properly crediting the source. Hirsch lays out 12 arguments for his case and sent an email to Aftenposten’s editor Per Kristian Haugen asking for a response, but he didn’t get any. Not until Dagbladet.no looked into the story. Still, Aftenposten does not want to admit to plagiarism.

Presently there is a debate going on in traditional media (here and in Dagens Naeringliv) and in blogs (here and here in English) in Norway about plagiarism and whether this is a common practice among journalists. The same debate would have been healthy to see here in Sweden regarding the Dagens Nyheter case, but instead silence prevails.

It’s quite interesting to see what stories gets picked up abroad about your own country. A few weeks back, some of the most covered topics about Sweden was about an elk that stole a bike and about the Swedish king wanting a photo of princess Madeleine’s chest removed from a website. Not exactly the most important incidents, but apparently this is what gets people going.

During the last week, these topics regarding Sweden were among the most frequently covered by blogs and international media:

• Swedish pastor gets life for text murder messages
• Swedish fugitives caught
• Swedes Dominate Counter-Strike Championship
• Football: The Homeless World Cup 2004 in Sweden
• Golf: Britain’s Donald wins Scandinavian Masters in Sweden
• Hockey: Forsberg ready to go ‘100 percent’ in World Cup

CNN teams up with Technorati to monitor blogs and buzz during the Democratic National Convention. Doc Searls comments that this is “about the unavoidable coming together of blogs and media to cover a Major Event in symbiosis rather than competition”. Jay Rosen has written an extensive post (as always) that says it all.

The Northwest Voice, a Californian newspaper is experimenting with participatory journalism in which most of the content published in an online edition and a weekly print edition is submitted by community members.

“The people say what’s important to them rather than having a handful of journalists make those judgments on behalf of the community,” publisher Mary Lou Fulton told Wired.

That is an interesting approach since much of the job in journalism traditionally has been to collect, sort and present information that the media judge is important to the public. It reminds me of a statement made by George W. Bush to a reporter: “You’re making a powerful assumption, young man. You’re assuming that you represent the public. I don’t accept that.”

I don’t think that the public necessarily better represents itself when it comes to journalism, but I like the initiative and there are succesful examples like Korean OhmyNews, so who knows, is this the future of journalism?

The Swedish blog Stockholm Spectator recently broke a story about possible plagiarism at Sweden’s largest daily Dagens Nyheter. At first it seemed that the story wasn’t going anywhere, in spite of being discussed on several blogs, but tonight Stockholm Spectator speculates if the journalist has quietly been fired because of the inconvenient news about plagiarism. The Stockholm Spectator has not been able to confirm the news, so stay tuned for further developments.

Update: The journalist has published at least one more article since I posted this, so it seems that the Stockholm Spectator might have jumped the gun when they assumed that he was fired.