While it’s hard to keep up with developments in all areas of personal publishing – blogs, podcasts, photosharing, what have you – it’s not very demanding to spot innovations at Norwegian news websites. Fellows, we have only been doing web journalism for ten years. That’s nothing. We don’t have to stop here. Three ideas inspired by some recent developments:

• Stop copy & paste: This week, a Dagsavisen reporter discovered that Nettavisen not only quoted one of her news articles – they published the same article, word by word. Nettavisen’s editor threw in the towel and paid her for the theft. But he should do more. Far too many poor online journalists have to spend their days quoting colleagues’ stories instead of producing their own original material. And it’s been like this for years. Sad. But when you have to quote others, then do it properly, by linking to the original if it’s available on the web (Dagsavisen’s story was). For years, web news editors have been banning the use of external links to competitors because they want the readers to stay on their site. Bloggers have shown what an unsuccesful policy that has been. Some will say I’m a web idealist for insisting on these things, but one thing I’m certain of: Working with the web’s logic is a precondition for success in the long run. Working against it will inevitably fail.
• Invest in journalism: Aftenposten did a piece on the future of news this week, the headline claiming that “Soon the readers will have to write the news themselves”. Torry Pedersen, the boss of our biggest news website VG Nett, is quoted thus: “So far it is a deliberate policy that we’re not spending our resources on finding exclusive stories”. Let me try to understand this. VG Nett’s mother paper is losing readers, VG Nett is making a lot of money (reportedly), the company will necessarily have to “convert” paper readers to web users – and the editor is consciously not investing in journalism (priority is however given to the launch of a weight loss club). This can’t be sustainable. Today’s and especially tomorrow’s media environment will demand much more of journalists – not less. Yes, I know that VG this week was given the website of the year award by the Norwegian Media Businesses’ Association. We should still expect much more of them.
• Rediscover importance: So many Norwegian news websites, so little real news overview. Here’s what I would read: A minimalist news website dedicated to reporting only the most important news – nation, world, economy, culture, opinion. Always updated with the five most important news stories from each of those sections. With selected links to the best original coverage available. A Google News made by people, without the noise. Or maybe it would be more like a super-informed, but un-opinionated blog. Why? Because the news websites have become so obsessed with maximizing clicks that the news drowns in funny titles, strange tales and showbiz. The result is that I stop going to news websites for news.