As I wrote last Wednesday, Sweden’s second daily, Svenska Dagbladet today launched a blog, the first from an established Swedish media. The blog PJ Just nu (PJ Right now) bears the name of the paper’s chief political editor PJ Anders Linder, although it is really a group blog. All the paper’s political editors will contribute to the blog.
In today’s paper, Linder writes:
“At SvD we feel that it is important that also established quality media – “mainstream” media as the bloggers like to put it – accepts the challenge and gets involved. We must find our own way of using the new tools and develop our own tone of voice. It would be devestating to isolate in hope that all this will blow away. We must participate; to learn, to influence, to live in the flow.”
On the blog, Linder links to three other blogs: PR agency JKL and libertarian thinkers Dick Erixon and Johan Norberg. It is quite typical that he links to Erixon and Norberg. For all his claims of an open discussion and that bloggers in general are generous with links to both allies and opponents, it will be interesting to see if “PJ Just nu” will promote an open debate (the blog does not have a comments function) or be a forum for liberal thinking. The thing is that both Erixon and Norberg are part of the liberal think tank Timbro, which by coincidence Linder was head of between 1996 and 2000. Also, Fredrik Erixon, chief economist at Timbro has, “what you might call close ties with a senior editor at JKL Blog” and Anders Kempe of JKL was a member of Timbro’s board (thanks to Per Gudmundsson for the link).
Either way, the fact that SvD launches a blog is another sign that the two leading Swedish dailies approach the blogosphere quite differently. Dagens Nyheter is shying away from it, maybe partly because of the “attacks” by local media watchdogs like Stockholm Spectator. SvD on the other hand seems to embrace the blogosphere. They read blogs, they quote blogs in the paper and now they have their own blog. To me that sounds like a smarter approach if you want to stay tuned to developments in journalism.
Footnote: RSS feed here. No trackback or comments functions yet.
Update: Another thing, if you start fooling around with RSS feeds, change the URL once you go live otherwise everyone will see your old posts. SvD obviously started posting on July 15…
Update 2: “PJ Just nu” is not the first blog from a Swedish editorial writer. Håkan Jacobson, editorial writer at Upsala Nya Tidning has a blog, although it is a personal blog and not connected to the paper.