Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Another Swede off to Manchester?

Media, Sport: July 9th, 2007 by PR

Could another Swede be about to join Sven-Göran Eriksson at Manchester City? The football rumour mill is certainly grinding a story to that effect and the cereal in question is Toulouse forward Johan Elmander. But the price tag is a tidy €25 million.

Expressen graciously admits error

Media: June 29th, 2007 by PO

On Wednesday, The Local was first in Sweden with fresh details of CIA activity in Sweden at the time of the Vietnam War.

As James Savage has already written in a previous blog post, we were somewhat irritated when Expressen’s website published the story late on Thursday under the headline ‘Expressen reveals…’

But credit where it’s due…

Shortly after trade paper Resumé published an article dealing with Expressen’s blunder, two staff members from Expressen phoned The Local to apologize for the mistake.

Web editor Joakim Svensson and reporter Joel Holm both very graciously admitted that there had been an error of of omission, and Expressen has now changed its engaging series of articles accordingly.

We can’t ask for more than that.

Expressen ‘reveals’ CIA spy story – really?

Media, Newsbites, Politics, Sweden abroad: June 28th, 2007 by JS

Now, I don’t usually think that bashing other media in Sweden, big or small, gets anyone very far, but just for the record I think it’s worth pointing out that Expressen.se is currently leading with a story that The Local was the first to break in Sweden yesterday.

The story, that US spies infiltrated the Swedish anti-Vietnam War movement, was revealed in newly declassified CIA documents. We know Expressen found it through us because Expressen’s reporter contacted our reporter, Paul O’Mahony, after seeing our story, to get a link to the document. Paul gave him the link.

When they published today, not only was there no reference to The Local (bad manners, but we’ll live), but the article was prefaced by the claim that ‘Expressen revealed’ the story. They have done their own interviews and gathered material, but their claim that they ‘revealed’ the story is inaccurate. As we know that they saw it on The Local first, it is more than inaccurate: it’s a deliberate untruth.

Mirroring The Local

Media: June 26th, 2007 by PO

The story of Roger Tullgren, he of heavy metal disability fame, has made the news the world over. Here is The Mirror‘s take, with some strangely familiar quotes. For example:

“I think it’s extremely strange. If someone has has a gambling addiction you don’t send them down the racetrack. We try to cure the addiction, not encourage it.”

Melodifestivalen: The Local’s predictions

Media, Miscellaneous: March 5th, 2007 by PR

So the line-up for Saturday’s Melodifestivalen showdown is decided – notwithstanding the pre-requisite bouts of flu, winter vomit disease, lost larynxes and nerves that will lead to tabloid headlines about how at least half of the performers’ appearances are in doubt.

But assuming everyone shows up, here’s The Local’s quick and dirty stab at punditry.

Winner: The Ark
Irresistable glam rock song, great performance. From the high-voting-propensity teenage girls to the less relevant granny brigade, this is one for all the family. Unstoppable.

Runner up: Sarah Dawn Finer
Perhaps a surprise, but Sweden will be moved by the gospelesque power ballad and Finer’s stunning voice.

3rd: Andreas Johnson
Equalling last year’s third spot, Johnson’s song – another 60s pastiche – will sell well after the dust settles but won’t be going to Helsinki.

4th: Sebastian
The power of Idol – and an inoffensive song – got the Sebster through, but his good looks won’t be enough to take him further.

5th: Måns Zelmerlöw
The power of Idol – and an inoffensive song – got the Månster through, but his good looks won’t be enough to take him further.

6th: Sanna Nielsen
Will pick up the support of a certain core of voters who will always vote for the blonde with the pop-schlager. But nobody else.

7th: Tommy Nilsson
The nostalgia vote and a song of peace and harmony won’t be enough to boost this veteran’s chances.

8th: Sonja Aldén
Has the wind in her sails after a terrific performance in the Second Chance round, but Aldén’s peak is behind her, at least for this year.

9th: Anna Book
Expect tears and gushes of love for the people of Sweden as they close this chapter of Book’s career.

10th: Marie Lindberg
A harsh lesson is lying in wait for the strumming teacher from Gothenburg.

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE!

Dagens Media: a catalogue of PR errors

Media: February 27th, 2007 by PO

‘Star reporter’ writes about himself in Dagens Media. General hilarity ensues as newspapers nationwide fall over themselves to have a chuckle at the expense of a rival magazine.

How could they have allowed one of their own reporters to write a news item about his own court case?

It was embarrassing, as clear a breach of press ethics as the country has seen in decades. Only a swift apology and admission of error on the editor’s behalf would suffice if the magazine was to salvage anything from the wreckage.

Instead, he unleashed a series of statements that will live long in the collective media memory for all the wrong reasons.

Take it away, Rolf van den Brink:

Niclas was available. He was able to do the job quickly because he knew the issue.

Well, yes, of course he knew the issue. He was the issue.

Naturally we want to test whether we can do something like this and see what kind of reactions we get. That was of course part of it too.

Naturally. Of course.

Our job as the sharpest magazine in the advertising and media sector is not to preserve ancient journalistic attitudes, it is to challenge them and dare to show new approaches.

Ancient journalistic attitudes? Eh, is that a modern way of saying press ethics?

I stand behind the decision to publish. And it’s good that it created a debate, even if I’m not sure it’s such a good one.

It wasn’t a debate so much as a laughathon.

Most people seem to think we are idiots. I’m not sure I understand why.

Would it have been better if somebody else at the magazine had written the article?

Yes, somebody else should have written it. Just make sure the readers know that Niclas Rislund works there.

And why stand behind the decision to publish when everybody is telling you that it was the wrong one? Just take a step back and admit your mistake.

And to conclude today’s lesson, here is what you should not have written in your editorial column shortly before your self-proclaimed ‘star reporter’ wrote an article about himself:

There is nothing that journalists like more than being written about. It is understandable. The wettest of dreams. You create news about yourself, you make the news and take the credit and the praise. YOU ARE the news.

Never a truer word spoken.

The Swenska tjej – it’s the grej!

Media, Offbeat: February 2nd, 2007 by PR

For all students of Swenglish, here’s Swedish comedian Henrik Schyffert’s glorious contribution to the tongue, from comedy show Veckans nyheter.

“The Swenska tjej likes the killar to wisa känslor och städa the badrum. They thinks its manligt for Swenska men to be like a tant. But it’s konstigt because then the tjejgänget go to Grekland and then they want to ligga with the…”

Well, you can see the rest here:

Thanks to Charlotte for the tip.

The Local goes to Finland

Media: January 16th, 2007 by PO

The Local went to Finland on Monday night to do an interview.

OK, not really. Paul O’Mahony sat in the office and was interviewed via Skype by Finland’s favourite son of Baltimore, Phil Schwarzmann from Radio Free Finland.

Unfortuntately there were some problems with the Skypecasting service and the interview couldn’t go out live.

Then Phil had some other technical problems which led to the mysterious disappearance of the first ten minutes of the interview. That was a shame because we talked a bit about the development of The Local over the years, how far its come since its humble beginnings and more general backslapping.

Oh well, not to worry, we still had a good long chat and the rest of the interview is available for download either at Radio Free Finland or at Phil’s excellent Finland for Thought blog.

Obol, Åmal and the F-word

Media: January 12th, 2007 by PR

Investment company Obol is in trouble in Sweden for not having the necessary licences to trade here. Not turning up for their meeting with the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority probably didn’t help their case.

Maybe Swedish money news web site DinaPengar.se didn’t think the story was very interesting. Maybe that’s why they spiced up the picture in what, to a native English speaker, is quite a surprising way:

The reference, in case you were wondering what on earth justified such a headline, is to a popular Swedish film from 1998 called Fucking Åmal. Åmal sounds a bit like Obol when pronounced in a certain way. Other than that, quite what an investment company’s licencing problems have to do with teenage lesbian love problems is anybody’s guess.

The humour of IKEA

Media, Miscellaneous: January 12th, 2007 by PR

A Norwegian IKEA ad is entertaining Scandinavians on Bubblare.se at the moment. It certainly casts new light on the oft-quoted Swedish adage that ‘we’re all farmers at heart’. Enjoy:

That prompted us to have a rummage for more humour from the furniture makers of Älmhult.

This one, produced for the German market last summer, was reportedly banned after the Swedes found it insulting:

While nobody should mock midsummer, kids with vibrators are apparently fair game:

And for pure shock value, this short ad will take some beating:

Björn Borg: happy at last

Media, Miscellaneous: January 7th, 2007 by PR

Björn Borg has at last found the inner calm that has eluded him since his Wimbledon heyday more than 25 years ago. That, at least, is the impression he gives in a rare interview with the UK’s Observer newspaper.

The article is one of a series on heartbreaking sporting moments. Borg’s does not relate to his dethroning by John McEnroe in the Wimbledon and US Open finals of 1981 but his ill-advised comeback in 1991 (in which he used a wooden racket while kids in school playgrounds were using more technically-advanced graphite rackets).

See the article for more on that. But if you’re in a rush and don’t have time to read it, what’s important is that one of Sweden’s five only living legends (the other four used to sing a bit and now play cat-and-mouse with the tax authorities) is happy again:

‘It took many years to find peace with myself and to find what I really wanted to do,’ he says. ‘I had a lot of choice, a lot of opportunities. I tried lots of things, some good, some bad. It has taken me this many years to get to where I want to be.’

Not only does he live in a nice house in the Stockholm archipelago with his third wife, playing tennis five times a week and coaching Swedish juniors – his underwear business is also doing well:

‘We are now doing unbelievably well,’ he says. ‘New designers, new managers. We are on the stock market in Sweden, in 10 different territories in Europe and the business is huge …’

More Filippa Reinfeldt

Media, National, Politics: December 11th, 2006 by PO

Our Introducing column this week takes you into the Christmas home of Filippa Reinfeldt, bun-baker extraordinaire. For those who wish to delve a bit deeper, here are links (in Swedish) to the “Christmas porn” and “Knutby smile” comments mentioned in the article.

The originator of the sectarian smile comment, Sakine Madon, also has a blog post about the censored topless hockey picture we wrote about last week.

Stockholm needs more nutcases, country bumpkins and foreigners

Media, Society: December 6th, 2006 by PR

Writing in Wednesday’s Stockholm City, columnist Sakine Madon outs herself as an antisocial Stockholmer (in Swedish):

“Start a conversation on the tube or bus? Never! I’ll leave that to nutcases or country bumpkins or foreigners who haven’t blended in with the capital’s strict norms.”

Sakine admits that she doesn’t speak with neighbours or to people in lifts. But seeing a woman, a drug addict, perhaps, slumped against a wall in Central Station in the morning rush hour at least made her wonder:

“I’m not unique. It still felt a bit strange that a woman sat there alone crying at Centralen and nobody reacted.”

Nutcases, country bumpkins and foreigners – Stockholm needs you.

Note to SVT: drop drama, follow football

Media: December 4th, 2006 by PR

Without wishing to criticise Swedish Television again, the announcement that they have lost the right to broadcast matches from Euro 2008 (that’s a major international soccer tournament, for our American readers) epitomises the organisation’s weakness and lack of direction.

What is the point of having a state broadcaster if it doesn’t broadcast the major national events that bring the whole country together?

The vast majority of SVT’s output is so dull that it makes you want to stab yourself in the leg with a sharpened pencil. Indeed, a few months ago the station’s own journalists criticised the decision to invest in more drama and chat shows.

News is a pre-requisite. But drama is expensive, Sweden doesn’t do it well for television, and it divides audiences. And chat is cheap but short-termist.

The days of bargain rights to broadcast sports are long gone, but SVT should be pulling out all the stops to capture the broadcast rights to the one thing which still gets half the country gathering around the old flat screen. If that means cutting the drama budget to zero, then that’s a satisfactory double-whammy.

It would perhaps be a slight exaggeration to say that access to major sporting events on TV is a basic human right. But national events are few and far between these days and the surge of public feeling associated with a few football matches should be channelled through the state-owned media.

SVT rolls out the red carpet for Castro

Media, Politics: November 30th, 2006 by PO

Swedish public service television, SVT, is planning a full evening of Fidel Castro related fun (in Swedish) at the beginning of next month.

The 2^nd of December sees a double celebration for Cuba: for one thing it offers a belated chance to celebrate Fidel?s 80^th birthday¹; it is also the 50^th anniversary celebration of La Révolutión [sic]. Fidel Castro has been in power in Cuba since 1959. Rumours relating to his health have fuelled speculation about what will happen to Cuba when he dies. Who is he, the man who has survived against all odds and has seen 10 American presidents come and go?

Former SVT producer Per Gudmundson makes a few points (in Swedish) about the cosy evening?s entertainment.

Note that state television is celebrating a dictator and a communist power takeover. And it is doing so with two propaganda films that praise Castro, or ?Fidel? as SVT prefers to call him. Nowhere do they manage to mention that Castro is a dictator, he has just ?been in power? for 50 years.

All three studio guests are communists or communist apologists.

No discrimination from Sweden’s advertising watchdog

Media, Society: November 29th, 2006 by PR

This week’s news that an ad for coffee firm Lavazza was withdrawn after Sweden’s Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising (ERK) found it to be discriminatory prompted a few enquiries to see what else fell foul of the media moral guardians.

What ERK objects to most is the use of scantily-clad women to attract punters’ attention to ads. Earlier in the year the watchdog criticised twelve ads which did this, including one for Lee Jeans featuring a woman in a g-string with the Lee logo stamped on a buttock.

Radisson SAS were ticked off for featuring an attractive Nordic-looking woman in a hotel room in association with the slogan “It’s easy to sleep with the best in Scandinavia”. Dressman got a dressing down for an ad featuring a man in his pants and a woman in less.

Some of the ads which ERK has slammed clearly cross the line into the territory of exploitation. But others clearly don’t. Compare, for example, the stylistic, high-glam, fifties-pastiche Lavazza image, one of a series shot by photographer Ellen von Unwerth, with the flyer for Club B.I.A.T.C.H. You don’t need to be a gender expert to see the difference.

ERK undermines its objectives by lumping such ads together, and comes across as some kind of amateur pressure group. If Sweden is to have an advertising watchdog, then it must look at ‘standards’ from every perspective, not just gender. It must ensure that the law is followed and not get drawn into matters of taste. Beyond that, let the market decide.

What’s extraordinary is that no advertisers seem to object to ERK’s verdicts, meekly removing ads which are criticised. Without any opposition or debate, ERK will push its own agenda to the extreme – say, blocking ads which show girls in gender-stereotyping pink pyjamas while boys wear blue.

Sounds crazy? Last month Jysk had its knuckles rapped for precisely that.

Pubic Service Announcement

Media, Offbeat, Society: November 27th, 2006 by PR

Spare a thought for 22 year old Mia Adrelius, who is in hospital with a nasty infection after shaving her pubic hair. Now Mia has decided to go public with her plight, and Expressen was only too happy to oblige.

“It’s not the first time I’ve done it, but it’s definitely the last.”

After trimming her front lawn, so to speak, Mia noticed the infection. Alas, antibiotics didn’t do the job and she had to go to hospital, almost unable to walk.

“The doctors thought it was one big abscess. But as it turned out, there were thirty.”

What on earth possesses a young woman with a colony of boils in her knickers to get on the phone to a national tabloid about it? Mia told Expressen that she wants to warn others: 

“This is a trend which is creeping down the age groups without girls knowing how bad it can be.”

Perhaps the pubicity will do some good.

The Local – more readers than…

Business, Media: November 22nd, 2006 by PR

Part of the cut and thrust of publishing involves seizing every opportunity to boast that you have more readers than your competitors. For example, Swedish media mag Dagens Media is singing its own praises: for the first time last week, it had more visitors to its web site than arch-rival Resumé.

According to the KIA Index, Dagens Media had 44,297 visitors to its web site, compared to Resumé’s 38,665.

By comparison, The Local had 69,464 unique visitors last week. We’re not ranked by KIA, but that would have put us in a perfectly respectable 90th position on the index, just above Affärsvärlden (67,693), Ny Teknik (67,050) and Stureplan (54,048). Just thought we’d mention it.

King of Sweden’s web sites is still Aftonbladet. The tabloid’s site recorded 3,826,298 unique visitors in week 46 (November 13th-19th).

Lazy Swedish writers

Media, Society: November 21st, 2006 by PR

“I exploited the system to live my dream,” admitted Punkt SE columnist Sara Kadefors on Tuesday.

The system she’s referring to is Sweden’s generous unemployment benefits programme of the early eighties. The dream she’s referring to is presumably being an occasional columnist for a free daily tabloid.

“It was a wonderful time. I slept and was hungover, wrote a little poem when I was in the mood, or painted a watercolour of the west coast landscape – exploited the system, to put it bluntly. I really just had one thing written in my diary, every Thursday: hand in the unemployment card. And that almost felt demanding.”

Sara reveals how she would do anything to avoid home help for pensioners (“they shat themselves a lot”) and admits that maybe she even faked a certificate of employment so that she could realise her dream sooner.

There’s a debate in Sweden at the moment about whether writers should be funded by the state until they discover their commercial muse. With the best will in the world, it’s hard to find sympathy for a writer who claims taxpayers’ money so he or she can go on churning out guff that nobody will pay to read.

The argument in favour of such funding is that a country needs cultural diversity. With her candid confession, Kaderfors at least removes any quaint notion of a noble writer battling to produce great art. Although she may still be a little deluded, ending her column:

“Who knows what would have happened if I had been forced to do home help?”

Maybe, Sara, the experience would have given you something interesting to write about. And Sweden’s taxpayers would have been saved a few kronor. In short, everyone would have been a winner.

Sweden’s Mother of the Year

Media, Society: November 17th, 2006 by PR

Never mind the Nobel Prizes – Sweden’s Mother of the Year has been announced.

How would you decide the Mother of the Year? What would the criteria be? How would you measure? Can the qualities and success of a mother be evaluated until the child is a fully-developed adult? (The Nobel committee often waits decades before awarding a science prize, since the true effects of a discovery can take that long to be felt.)

Amazingly, all of the attendees of the award were second-rate celebrities or media names. Are the best mothers in Sweden really all celebrities? It looks like the award was made more for ‘achievements despite being a mother’.

OK, OK, the awards are run by Mama magazine, this is what they do, glitz sells etc. - but an award for a hard working, low-income, anonymous, unglamorous woman, doing what she can with limited means to give her kids the best possible upbringing would have been worth a lot more than this fluff.