November 2004: A break through for blogs

I think we can officially declare November 2004 as the month that blogs broke through on a wider scale in Sweden. There has been a significant increase in the number of online articles in traditional media that have mentioned blogs and some of the incidents that have helped bring blogs into the spotlight are:

> The first Swedish blog forum, Bloggforum 2004, in Stockholm. Thanks again Stefan & Erik for the initiative.

> Dagens Nyheter deleted a sentence about one of its journalists in Oivvio Polite’s article about Bloggforum. This stirred up a big debate.

> Media monitoring company Observer decides to monitor 10+ blogs. Several traditional media report about this.

> Journalist Per Gudmundson had to quit blogging if he wanted to keep his job at SVT. Also made it into several mainstream media, like SVT, Sydsvenskan, Journalisten (1 & 2) etc.

Apart from the increase in number of articles online, there were at least three occasions when blogs were discussed on Swedish Television in November and early December, first the Gudmundson incident was discussed on Kulturnyheterna on SVT, then Malte and Chadie were interviewed in K2 on SVT24, followed by a discussion about blogs in SVT1 with PJ Anders Linder and Nicklas Mattsson. I also had a small part in evangelizing blogs during November as I was interviewed by TT Spektra. The articles appeared in at least 15 local Swedish dailies, including Skånska Dagbladet and VLT (only one of them online though).

Does this mean that most people now know what a blog is? Definitely not. Most Swedes still haven’t heard about blogs or at least are not aware of what it is. But mainstream media are continuing to write about blogs in December, for example about how blogs were named word of the year by Merriam-Webster. Slowly, blogs are becoming mainstream.

UPDATE: My interview with TT Spektra has now been in 15 Swedish dailies:

Hallandsposten

Hudiksvalls Tidning

Hälsinge-Kuriren

Karlskoga-Kuriren (twice)

Kinda-Posten

Linköpings Tidning

Ljusdals-Posten

Mariestads-Tidningen

Nyheterna (Kalmar)

Skaraborgs Läns Tidning

Skånska Dagbladet

Vestmanlands Läns Tidning

Vimmerby Tidning

Örebro Kuriren