Blog hysteria in mainstream media

Swedish mainstream media are currently launching a bunch of blogs on their websites. I found a new one today at Aftonbladet where Tomas Ros blogs about the World Championships in hockey.

The other day Svenska Dagbladet launched a blog where a student, Helena Myrin, blogs about life after high school. (Hat tip to Chadie). On May 3 Expressen launched five blogs for a few of their well known columnists:

> PM Nilsson
> Cecilia Hagen
> Per Svensson
> Linda Skugge
> Ebba von Sydow

Journalist Fredrik Virtanen at Aftonbladet has attracted some impressive traffic to his quit-smoking-blog from its inception last month. And Sofia Olsson Olsén, chief editor at Norra Västerbotten has been blogging at Sofia OO just nu since December 2004. Political editor PJ Anders Linder was the first journalist with a blog hosted on a media website when he started his op-ed blog PJ just nu in August 2004.

During the last few months we have also seen the birth of some trade media blogs like science publication Forskning och Framsteg and IT publication IDG has one called IDG Subjektivt.

Norwegian daily Dagbladet has a different approach to its five blogs (football, politics, music, games and nightlife). It has invited some wellknown bloggers to participate on the blogs, like Bjørn Stærk.

Footnote: Aftonbladet promised to give 18-year old Evelina Björkegren a blog to be hosted at Aftonbladet.se. Her mother has chronic muscular pain and the family runs the risk of being evicted from their house. But from what I can see the blog is hosted at http://evelina.webblogg.se/

There are also a number of journalists with private blogs. More about that later.