I can think of many reasons why traditional media would want to start blogs. Dialogue does not seem to be the primary reason. I have examined 42 blogs from 17 Swedish newspapers and found that:
– 6 out of 10 newspapers do not allow comments on their blogs.
– Only 53% of the newspapers have RSS feeds for their blogs.
– Almost 3 out of 10 don’t have permalinks, something at least I think is a minimum requirement for a blog. Without permalinks a blog is probably nothing more than an online diary.
Only three blogs have both comments, RSS and permalinks enabled, so hats off to Dagens Industri (Diego), Norra Västerbotten and Sydsvenskan for a good technical understanding of the blogosphere.
Elements of participatory journalism are uncommon. I managed to find 6 blogs from 5 papers that included external writers in some form. Norrbottens-Kuriren is maybe the most positive example where the paper invites one blogger per week to write.
Since I have read in some of the comments from this weekend’s Swedish blog forum that some of the papers are considering to implement comments in the near future, this summary might need an update. But until then, here are the numbers (percentages are for individual papers, not for each blog).
Here is a list of 42 active or temporary blogs from 17 Swedish papers.
Media – Blog name:
Aftonbladet – Lotta Gröning
Aftonbladet – Tomas Ros’ hockey blog
Aftonbladet – Helle Klein
Aftonbladet – Robert Laul’s football blog
Aftonbladet – Fredrik Virtanen
Barometern – Blog (readers’ diary)
Dagens Industri – Diego.se
Dagens Nyheter – The Irak blog
Dagens Nyheter – Thomas Hall (German election)
Dagens Nyheter – Wifstrand’s elite handball blog
Dagens Nyheter – World Cup blog
Dalademokraten – Robert Sundberg’s media blog
Expressen – Anders Nunstedt (music)
Expressen – Cecilia Hagen
Expressen – The culture blog
Expressen – Lars Lindström
Expressen – Linda Skugge
Expressen – Olof Lundh (football)
Expressen – PM Nilsson
Expressen – The hockey blog
Expressen – Poker blog
Expressen – The NHL blog
Falu-Kuriren – Pralinbloggen
GT – Jimmy Fredriksson
GT – Kai Martin
Kvällsposten – Maria Rydhagen
Kvällsposten – Peter J Olsson
Mora Tidning – Carl Johan Bergman (sport)
Mora Tidning – Hockey blog
Nerikes Allehanda – NA blogs from Book Fair
Nerikes Allehanda – Eva’s blog
Nerikes Allehanda – English football
Nerikes Allehanda – Sylvia’s sisters
Norra Västerbotten – Sofia OO right now
Norrbottens-Kuriren – Blog of the week
Smålands-Posten – Camilla Carnmo (culture)
Smålands-Posten – Helena Söderlundh (entertainment)
Smålands-Posten – Tuva Klinthäll
Smålands-Posten – Stefan Nilsson (motor)
Sydsvenskan – Culture blog
Ystads Allehanda – Ulf & Lollo
Örnsköldsviks Allehanda – Ulf Eklund (sport)
And finally, it’s not a blog just because you say so.
Footnote: The blogs I have listed are blogs hosted on newspapers’ web sites. They do not need to be active. Personal journalist blogs are not included. Content has not been reviewed. Some blogs do not list their RSS feeds on the site, but they can be found via a search on Bloglines for example.