Author: kullin

The discussion on Swedish Television this morning about blogs is a perfect example of why we need blogs to increase the diversity of voices. In today’s society, media has almost a monopoly on filtering and interpreting information, deciding on what stories will be passed on to us citizens. Incidents that don’t fit in that framework will be left out. What media often does, take a look for example on the news on TV4 and SVT, is that they let journalists interview other journalists about a certain topic. Why bother bringing in an outside expert when you can grab one of your colleagues to do the job? So when SVT want to discuss blogs they let Fredrik Belfrage (journalist) interview PJ Anders Linder (journalist) and Nicklas Mattsson (former journalist) about blogs. There are hundred of bloggers out there, why choose Nicklas Mattsson who to my knowledge doesn’t even have a blog? It is because it is easy to make a (former) journalist into an expert. It is not that I have a problem with anything that PJ and Nicklas said this morning, rather it is just very typical of how media work. In the light of that discussion, it was a relief to view the exact opposite last night when Chadie and Malte were interviewed on K2 on SVT24. Oh wait, I remember that Malte said he was a freelance writer for Expressen. See what I mean?

UPDATE: Another thing, on K2 they claimed that the first mention of blogs in Swedish press was in Svenska Dagbladet on 29 July 2002, which is incorrect. The first mention was in this article in Ny Teknik on 2 May 2002.

In his grandiose farewell on his blog, Per Gudmundson wrote about David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust and the last ever concert on Hammersmith Odeon. In a freakish coincidence there is a documentary about that concert tonight at Cinemateket/Rival in Stockholm at 7 PM.