Journalist Per Gudmundson who was asked to stop blogging if he wished to keep his job at Swedish Television, was interviewed today on Kulturnyheterna on SVT. Somehow I sense that Per hasn’t entirely given up on his blog. Although I find it hard to believe, maybe a constructive debate can convince his boss to reconsider. The show can be viewed online here.
Blogs, blogs, blogs
Blogs are everywhere at the moment. Tonight there will be a discussion about blogs at 21.35 on Swedish tv channel SVT24. The show is called K2 and Chadie will be participating.
Tomorrow morning another leading blogger will be on tv, namely Svenska Dagbladet’s PJ Anders Linder who will be evangelizing (?) blogs in SVT1 Gomorron Sverige at 8.20. Don’t miss it.
It was like coming home
Yesterday evening the first ever Swedish PR awards was given out at a gala dinner in Stockholm. The PR consultancies’ organisation Precis estimated that a third of its members were present at Spinn 2004. For someone like me who spent a number of years at different agencies it was almost like coming home, I met so many people I haven’t seen in years and it was great fun. I think that will be the greatest benefit of this event, that people get an excuse to meet and mingle. And of course it is an incentive for the agencies and clients that win the awards. One award was given to Stena Line who had not used an agency.
Winners:
Category: IT/Telecom
Andréasson Public Relations for Jens of Sweden
Category: Pharma/Health
GCI Malmö for Boehringer Ingelheim, “dog arthrosis”
Category: Food
Prime for Svensk Mjölk (milk)
Category: Fashion
Rita Platzer PR for Gudrun Sjödén
Category: Travel/Tourism
Stena Line (no agency)
Category: Entertainment/Media
Prime for Vi i Villa
Category: Open class
Citigategramma for Robur
Category: Best use of channel/tool
JMW Kommunikation for Ajax-report
Spinning around
Precis, The Association of Public Relations Consultancies in Sweden, are hosting an event tonight that I am going to attend. The event is called Spinn 2004 and during the evening Precis will hand out awards for best marketing PR in 8 categories. The name Spinn upset people at agency Spinn Action Marketing AB, who thought Precis should have managed to give their competition a name that had not been taken by an agency.
I have another problem with the word “spin”. It doesn’t have very positive connotations to it and I am surprised that the PR industry really wants to be associated with spin or to be recognized as spin doctors.
Some negative definitions of the word spin:
> twist and turn so as to give an intended interpretation; “The President’s spokesmen had to spin the story to make it less embarrasing”
> make up a story; “spin a yarn”
The name was coined by Citigate Gramma.
A moderate blog
Swedish Television: Blogging is not ok
One of the leading Swedish bloggers, journalist Per Gudmundson has decided to quit blogging. He had come clean with his employer SVT (Swedish public service television) about his blog and his boss noted that the blog articles goes against the policy for SVT journalists to refrain from public statements or actions that might jeopardize the objectivity of the company [SVT]. And since blogging is a job at below minimum wage his decision was pretty easy. Job: yes. Blog: no.
Per says in his final blog post that “the blog is stopping me in my career and I need to move on”.
Sadly one of the few blogging journalists and one of the best blogs will be no more in the blogosphere. For some, blogs will be a career booster but for others it will be an obstacle. About three weeks ago Gudmundson was named Sweden’s fourth most influential blogger by media monitoring company Observer, but that information cannot have reached his boss at SVT.
UPDATE: Tobias Billström, member of the Swedish Parliament says about the decision:
– I question the management’s evaluation of Per Gudmunson’s blog. Of course a journalist can’t watch a demonstration he participates in himself, but to comment on different courses of events on a blog is not a problem for impartiality.