The first real blogs to surface at the turn of the century, or thereabouts, represented a huge leap in the media disruption, later manifesting itself in the demise of numerous newsprint outlets and the subsequent plunge in the old media’s revenues, further manifested by the coming of Facebook, Twitter and similar phenomena, rendering most news corporations’ quest for a sustainable business model, by way of pay walls and mobile apps, a rather desperate one.
Along came the automated aggregation tools, such as Paper.li, enabling the private news consumers to compile their …

Norwegian blogger Chrstoffer Biong published a blog post last week (in Norwegian), criticising a severe case of…

The world press went completely bonkers Sunday night, remaining frenzied, in the wake of The Guardian’s…

In connection with the Bergen Railway’s 100th anniversary last Friday, the Norwegian Broadcating Corporation (NRK) ran a highly bold experiment during Saturday’s prime time: A spectacular journey from Bergen to Oslo, for the full duration of the approximately seven-hour trip, as seen from the engine driver’s seat.
Screendump from the NRK programme on the Bergen Railway.
The programme re-ran in its entirety on the auxiliary NRK 2 today, a huge success, praised on Twitter, Facebook and in a number of domestic blogs, but is available to you, too, as the entire “show” has …

My absence from the social media scene during summer, mainly based on a number of all-too time-consuming assignments, has lead me to realise that I simply do not miss it, save for blogging, as you will understand. And I think I know why, as I suspect I really tired of the social media more than a decade ago. “Hang on,” you say? “Social media didn’t exist at the time”?
Dear reader, I beg to differ.
The sudden enthusiasm for web 2.0 and, in particular, the scores of social media outlets emerging over the …

Some of us have mourned the apparent demise of CitJ site iNorden.org, a service we all hoped would once become the Scandinavian response to the Korean success OhmyNews, which, evidently, never came to pass. After about a year’s existence, iNorden flopped big time last autumn, at which time I decided to retire myself as editor, leaving it all to co-editor Øyvind Strømmen, who clearly didn’t have much time to spend on the project either.
The remaining staff, if that’s an appropriate term, was unable to uphold the regularity we came to …

I’ve never had the pleasure of counting myself among the Alexa elite (as a matter of fact, this blog holds a humble 8763rd place – among sites Norwegians visit). Never paid much attention to search engine optimisation, commenting wildly on other bloggers’ posts for requital traffic, unless I should, for other reasons, but I do appreciate frequent visitors and love the input you provide, unless you’re up to no good, that is.
In short, my insignificances are indeed highly insignificant, in the big picture that is the blogosphere, but I cherish …

We all seem perfectly agreed that the credit crunch has to take most of the blame for the current media crisis, threatening to overthrow the press we’ve become so dependent on over more than a century or so, but didn’t the media’s frantic search for cost reductions really begin years and years ago – some time around last fin-de siècle?
I, for one, still harbour vivid memories of my very first job in the business, an almost 20 year old novice in a provincial Norwegian newspaper, which happened to keel over …

Amid what up until recently was considered a newsprint crisis, commercial TV stations in Norway take drastic budget measures, of which TVNorge’s (TVNorway) appears overly dramatic, as it on Monday announced the shut down of its news, sports and weather forecast department, effective by the end of this year. The channel’s local programming for the Oslo area, OsloTV, is affected, too, taking effect on 19 June this year.
The decision won’t affect the number two commercial channel’s presenters, but third party provider Mastiff, in charge of content and production, took quite …

Amazon’s Kindle DX launch stirred enthused response in the media business the other day, which shouldn’t come as a surprise really, seeing how the old media for the time being seem to be on a desperate search for ways out of the current downturn.
The Kindle DX, Amazon’s generation 2 ebook board, with a larger screen, specially designed for newspapers, is by many expected to be the salvation for a newspaper business in utter distress. The very idea is, of course, brilliant. Save the forests and reduce costs! But is it …

About a week after New Year’s Eve, amid Israeli warfare in Gaza, I wrote a post on Palestinian blogger Sameh Akram Habeeb, whose life was in immediate peril as he remained at home to report on the Israeli advances.
Palestinian blogger Sameh Akram Habeeb (photo from Gaza today)
Needless to say, we were all severely shocked by the atrocities the Palestinians were forced to endure, even though most fled their homes to take shelter. Unlike Sameh Akram Habeeb, who provided us with the latest developments – a true and passionate journalist at …

Only weeks ago we saw proof that the onset of the long-awaited newsprint death already may signify a new era’s dawn, as the U.S. Colorado online only InDenver.com rose — or is about to rise — from the ashes of The Rocky Mountain News. Examples are abundant, and seen even in the farthest corners of the world, such as here in Norway, where we’ve seen the first newspapers tumble already, alongside crumbling media corporations.
In a global perspective we even see “the Gray lady” — The New York Times — struggle …