Second blogger to bite the dust

Dagens Nyheter today writes that liberal debater Johnny Munkhammar will lose his job for blogging about topics that are not in line with the vision of his employer the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svenskt Näringsliv).

– He hasn’t always had the same opinion as Svenskt Näringsliv, and it can be hard to separate when he speaks as a private person and when he speaks for us. Our mission is to represent the views of our member companies, says Inger Holmström, head of communications at Svenskt Näringsliv.

Just about a week ago we had the incident with journalist Per Gudmundson who was told to quit blogging and now this. What does that tell us about blogging in Sweden? I’m not sure yet. But clearly some bloggers should be nervous. Is your blog officially approved by your organization or is it clearly a private matter? If you don’t have a clear answer to this question you should arrange for a meeting with your boss today.

The article is not online yet. Munkhammar says he will keep his blog.

Footnote: Bloggers saw this coming last week.

Att:ention Wired readers – no need to read

Pontus Schultz reads Wired. Especially the October issue.

Today I got my hands on the newest magazine on the Swedish market, Att:ention, a magazine about “business and pleasure” from Bonnier publishing house Bonzoo. Att:ention is media entrepreneur Pontus Schultz’ new baby, so to speak (no, not the one he pushes around in a pram…). The magazine seems to be a salute to entrepreneurs, talents and free agents and is a nice mish mash of career advice, design, and portraits of young (good looking, of course) people who “made it”. No-one is old, no-one is ugly. Throw in some soft porn, some gays and a bunch of former McKinsey consultants and you sort of see where this is heading. It’s the dotcom boom all over again minus the hype, it is “brand you” and free agents and the talents rule. No, I am being a bit mean, it is really quite interesting and I’m looking forward to read more of the articles, but what’s up with all these ex-McKinseys being mentioned over and over again? Wouldn’t it be a bit more interesting to talk to someone who manages to stay at McKinsey?

Anywho. The magazine starts and ends with two terrible Wired rip-offs. First, it is the “wired/tired/expired” thing that gets not-so-reinvented. Hmm, so Tivo is hot, I thought that was so last year? The other thing from Wired is the Jargon Watch that gets duplicated and 2 out of the 4 “new words” in Att:ention are from Wired in October (bluespamming and click fraud). Even the reference to Gizmodo is in there. We don’t want a “Wired meets Café”, but two months later. Give me something I haven’t read before. Not the Pinc House that I read about in Residence some, what, 12 months ago?

If we disregard those small mishaps, I haven’t had time to read that many articles yet so maybe I’m jumping the gun here. I think Att:ention has potential. This is a magazine that I could very well imagine reading and I think that Schultz often has a good view of what’s hot or not. But a magazine dedicated to entrepreneurship, new ideas and great thinkers can not survive by copying others.

Update: There’s some good reading in here, for example the interview with Jesper Kärrbrink and the article about the Swedish music industry.

November 2004: A break through for blogs

I think we can officially declare November 2004 as the month that blogs broke through on a wider scale in Sweden. There has been a significant increase in the number of online articles in traditional media that have mentioned blogs and some of the incidents that have helped bring blogs into the spotlight are:

> The first Swedish blog forum, Bloggforum 2004, in Stockholm. Thanks again Stefan & Erik for the initiative.

> Dagens Nyheter deleted a sentence about one of its journalists in Oivvio Polite’s article about Bloggforum. This stirred up a big debate.

> Media monitoring company Observer decides to monitor 10+ blogs. Several traditional media report about this.

> Journalist Per Gudmundson had to quit blogging if he wanted to keep his job at SVT. Also made it into several mainstream media, like SVT, Sydsvenskan, Journalisten (1 & 2) etc.

Apart from the increase in number of articles online, there were at least three occasions when blogs were discussed on Swedish Television in November and early December, first the Gudmundson incident was discussed on Kulturnyheterna on SVT, then Malte and Chadie were interviewed in K2 on SVT24, followed by a discussion about blogs in SVT1 with PJ Anders Linder and Nicklas Mattsson. I also had a small part in evangelizing blogs during November as I was interviewed by TT Spektra. The articles appeared in at least 15 local Swedish dailies, including Skånska Dagbladet and VLT (only one of them online though).

Does this mean that most people now know what a blog is? Definitely not. Most Swedes still haven’t heard about blogs or at least are not aware of what it is. But mainstream media are continuing to write about blogs in December, for example about how blogs were named word of the year by Merriam-Webster. Slowly, blogs are becoming mainstream.

UPDATE: My interview with TT Spektra has now been in 15 Swedish dailies:

Hallandsposten

Hudiksvalls Tidning

Hälsinge-Kuriren

Karlskoga-Kuriren (twice)

Kinda-Posten

Linköpings Tidning

Ljusdals-Posten

Mariestads-Tidningen

Nyheterna (Kalmar)

Skaraborgs Läns Tidning

Skånska Dagbladet

Vestmanlands Läns Tidning

Vimmerby Tidning

Örebro Kuriren

Legal risks in corporate blogging

This article about legal risks in corporate blogging is from early November but well worth highlighting. Some key points:

> Negative or defamatory posts about a corporation or an individual might result in libel suits.

> Do your homework. If the blogger is going to make negative statements about a company he has to do his research and be able to prove his statements.

> Disclosure of trade secrets or confidential information. Employees who blog may intentionally or unintentionally share company secrets.

> Careless statements about the business that can be used during litigation.

Paying bloggers to blog – a sell out?

Software company Marqui.com are paying about 15 leading bloggers 800 USD to blog about their company. Bloggers need to put up a logo and link to the company website and mention Marqui once a week. I’m not so sure about this. OK, they claim that the bloggers can write positive or negative information, and they will not interfere. And because is it a first, it is a good PR opportunity for Marqui to create a buzz about the company and they even got mentioned in Business Week. But this approach is clearly different from just having ads on your blog. I have never been a friend of mixing advertising with editorial content. It dilutes the credibility of both the advertiser and the medium and bloggers who get paid to blog by one specific company are very close to selling out. The reason so many have turned to blogging is that they feel the corporate powers have too much influence – direct or indirect – over traditional media. If you then let sponsors have influence over your editorial content, I think you’ve lost a lot of cred, no matter what you actually write in those Marqui posts.

Sure I wouldn’t mind 2,400 USD for three months of blogging, but this is not the model I would choose.

What the paid bloggers say themselves about the sponsorships: here and here.

Only rock bands sell out. Journalists are supposed to make their money from ads. The second point is that this all comes down to trust. If you can trust me to be objective, it doesn’t matter that I’m being paid, so long as you know I’m being honest.