The white noise of Big Media, Small Media and Bloggers “will produce a phenomenal demand for originality” (quoting myself here, sorry). It also represents a fantastic chance for the educated, cultural conservative writer, and Per Svensson of Expressen knows how it works. To get ahead nowadays you have to blog, he acknowledges: “One is, I have understood, supposed to blend details from one’s richly textured daily life with profound reflections on the banalized present day, tell stories about meetings, food and coffee filter, blame the social democrats”… So he dutifully goes to work, with exciting tales of devouring his favourite inflight snack, a snack he had to bring with him because the SAS doesn’t serve the passengers anymore, terrible, the SAS isn’t what it used to be, now a cheap airline, the populism, the market – the social democrats’ fault, of course!

Svensson mocks blogging cliches and defends the banalized present at the same time. Well, he should. Google the wonderful Swedish word “förflackad” (the Norwegian “forflatet” can’t compete, the German “verflacht” is better but not quite there), and who is on top of the charts at the time of writing? Hr. Svensson. Out of respect I won’t even try to translate this favourite quote:

“Det har alltid varit ett skandalöst faktum att det kejserliga Roms bättre bemedlade damer tycks föredra muskulösa gladiatorer och bjärt sminkade skådespelare framför hårt bildade skalder med seriösa ambitioner.”

(via the Blind Hen’s post about the blogging ketchup effect now reaching Sweden.)

Searching for a journalism-oriented blog cluster takes time, but there really is one forming in Sweden:

• Media Culpa (thanks to a Fistful of Euros).
• Stockholm Spectator
• JKL Blog (in Swedish)
• Det perfekta tomrummet (in Swedish)
• Kommenterat (in Swedish)

Maybe some of these are not strictly or only about weblogs, media and journalism, but I’ll count them in anyway, for now. I found a couple of these through the Swedish media intelligence company Agent25, which now has added blogs to its sources. That’s also an interesting twist to the media intelligence market. Following blogs is obviously now considered business-relevant also in Northern Europe.

Mark Bernstein noted that the “Scandinavian-flavored Hypertext Weblog Cluster”, which he thinks used to be “one of the best places in the world to read about new developments in new media”, is breaking up. The bloggers who were active in the cluster don’t respond to each other’s ideas the way they used to. He used the opportunity to call for analysis of the weblog cluster concept, and got an answer from one of the “declustered”. Jill points to a research paper outlining an approach to the study of weblog communities and clusters.

Partly inspired by that discussion, and by Jay Rosen’s comment to my intention with this blog, I’m trying to identify other Norwegian/Scandinavian/North European blogs that concentrate on the same topics as me – broadly defined as journalism, weblogs and the media, with the emphasis on consequences for journalism, and written in English. Starting at home, the first search for a cluster of this type in Norway doesn’t yield too many results. There are definitely blogs that often touch on journalism-related topics, such as Bjørn Stærk blog, Jon Hoem’s Diablog and Anders Fagerjord’s Surftrail. But none of them focus primarily on journalism and blogs. I’m quite disappointed that none (forgive me if I’ve overlooked any) of our many good to brilliant media studies professors have taken up blogging (apart from those in the mentioned “new media” cluster). Jay Rosen’s example shows what a powerful tool it can be, especially for those labouring in media studies departments: Here’s a possibility to reach a wider audience than those reading scientific papers, without having to compromise on detail or style to get published in the media, and here’s a chance to establish a critical dialogue with the very same people that are the object of study – media professionals, readers, viewers.

My superficial search for a cluster produced something else, though – a clear impression that the Norwegian blogosphere is growing. A substantial number of new blogs have been started, quite a few with a political focus. That’s good, because in Norway the news website reader’s forums seem to have had the upper hand over the weblog genre until now, with some really unhealthy consequences – and that’s a subject I’ll return to.

In part 2, I’ll check out our Scandinavian neighbours’ journalism/blog-cluster tendencies.