Ordfront starts a blog

The publishing company Ordfront who publishes Sweden’s largest cultural magazine: Ordfront magasin is also an association with over 30,000 members, committed to the defense of democracy and human rights. Yesterday, Ordfront announced on its webpage that it has started a blog as a temporary solution until they have a “proper” forum in place for discussions. The blog will only be available to members.

Norwegian PR agencies see growth in lobbying

A recent survey of the Public Relations industry in Norway shows that:

>81 per cent of employees at PR agencies have an education at university level

>Most common educational background: Social studies or arts – 26 per cent, Business administration – 21 per cent, Journalism – 18 per cent

>Recruiting: 34 per cent from another PR agency, 25 per cent from private companies, 14 per cent from media.

>A third of the employees are mainly working with strategic counseling.

>Lobbying has grown from 5 per cent of the agencies’ turnover in 2002, to 11 per cent in 2004.

>The average agency loses a third of its clients every year.

PRSA about GPRBW

PRSA writes about Global PR Blog Week in the September issue of its e-newsletter. (Link via Corporate Engagement)

On a related matter, I was interviewed for a long article about blogs in the Swedish marketing publication Dagens Media on August 25, along with Tove Lifvendahl from JKL and Mark Comerford, lecturer in new media at the Department of Journalism, Media & Communication at Stockholm University. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to convice Dagens Media to publish the article online.

How to create buzz about a book about buzz

Mark Hughes has written a book about “the phenomenon of buzz, brands that get buzz, why, and the six secrets of buzz marketing for brands and celebrities alike”. He wants help with naming the book, and I found this a clever way to start a buzz about this book. Sadly his web site contains nothing else but this page, so I think he misses a great opportunity to give more information.

Via Adrants.

When will Internet Explorer support RSS?

If you ever doubted that RSS is going mainstream, here is another proof that it is. Poynter reports that the Firefox web browser will integrate “RSS feeds as “Live Bookmarks,” so folks who browse the Web with the bookmark sidebar open can have headlines displayed in that familiar context. Firefox also supports one-click RSS feed subscriptions if the website embeds a link tag in the head of the HTML document.”

Apple has previously announced RSS support directly in the Safari Web browser. How long before Microsoft will include RSS in Internet Explorer? Maybe they already are. Anyone who knows?

Dagens Nyheter subject of anti-semitism accusations

Dagens Nyheter is currently the target of a campaign from an organization “dedicated to fighting anti-Israel “bias” in the media”, because of a controversial cartoon by Hans Lindström published last Saturday. An organization called HonestReporting is urging its members to send protests to Dagens Nyheter’s reader ombudsman (it would be interesting to hear how many emails she has recieved). The story has been noticed by Andrew Sullivan and several others.

The Guardian recieved the same treatment in 2001, and you can read the paper’s response here.

How is a person supposed to know what is true or not, these days? The so called media watchdog HonestReporting has gotten another watchdog watching the watchdog, namely HonestReporting.org. I must admit I haven’t had time to read all the contents on these web sites, but HonestReporting.org claims that HonestReporting.com might not be that honest after all. Are you still following…?

I’m so not going to get in the middle of this, but I can understand that the cartoon above resulted in a protest storm, and I shudder at the thought of reactions to this one from the same cartoonist (UPDATE: There is now a different cartoon if you follow this link).

UPDATE: Dagens Nyheters reader ombudsman did actually receive a huge number of emails regarding the cartoon. Her respons here (in Swedish).