Making information work

In a op-ed piece in this mornings Dagens Nyheter (one of the large daily papers) was titled “The foreign minister talks to much on his blog“. The piece was created by a old editor-in-chief of many newspapers here in Sweden, and is clearly old fashioned in its views. He, Bertil Torekull, argues that Carl Bildt speaks too freely, and that he as an elected official is too “powerful” to be allowed to speak privately.

A vast majority of Mr. Torekull’s arguments are hopelessly off target. He claims that by allowing an elected official to answer direct attacks by media in his blog we are nearing a “Hugo Chávez Culture”. He argues this by comparing Mr. Bildt’s defense speaches on his blog to Mr. Chávez hour long TV speeches. What he misses, of course, is that the blog format allows conversation while a TV-broadcast is a one way communication.

I also reacted strongly to another statement by Mr. Torekull - he critizised Mr. Bildt for publishing his response to tabloid attacks on a “platform controlled by himself”, saying that it was not credible. Between the lines Mr. Torekull clearly is arguing for journalists, saying that the traditional media is the place to be, and that they are more neutral than Mr. Bildt in their handling of situations like this. Which of course is false. This is classic death spasms from a media decreasing in importance. I believe that editor controlled news will be pushed aside by citizen journalism, used controlled relevance, and private blogs.

It should be noted, however, that Mr. Torekull is on to something, without perhaps knowing it. I believe that he highlights the reason why so many Swedish CEO’s are scared of blogging: disclosure. An American CEO who blogs likely lets ten lawyers read their posts before they are made public, simply because they are speaking as an official spokesperson for the company.

I would recommend that Carl Bildt therefore either makes the blog more official by allowing foreign ministry department deal with each and every post, or make the blog more private by adding a disclamer statement where he separates his blog posts from his official capacity.

Update: The critique that Carl Bildt uses his blog to respond to critique has been answered. By Bildt. On his blog. This is a classic.

Update #2: Below you will find an image of the location of the people who arrived here, to my blog, via the link placed on Carl Bild’s blog via trackback from the link in the first update. My conclusion? There are lots of Swedes around the world who follow him. Must feel good. By looking at his source code, I can tell that he as I have Google Analytics installed. Hey, Mr. Bildt! Share your true stats!

David