TV4 buys political blog of journalist ousted in hacking scandal

Sweden's biggest commercial TV-channel is acquiring politikerbloggen.se for 1m SEK (about £75,000) (via Dagens Media).

The blog was set up by Niklas Svensson after he was ousted from Swedish tabloid Expressen in the aftermath last year's 'hacking-scandal'. Svensson lost his job when it was revealed he had failed to inform his superiors of how a source had given him log-in details for the governing party's intranet, log-in details Svensson insisted he'd never used for a story. He was later fined for data trespass by a Swedish court.

But, the former political reporter immediately set up politikerbloggen.se, and went on to blog his way back on the national agenda with many a great political scoop. Back when the blog launched, it reminded me a bit about the UK's Guido Fawkes, but it has now grown into what looks like a fully-fledged news, or rather niche news, site. The site even attracts good advertisement money according to Hans Kullin, who has more details on Politikerbloggen's scoops, ad revenue and visitors.

Comments

[Guido Fawkes]

It would cost a lot more than £75k to buy Guido.

[Kristine]

Well, people have all sorts of motives for writing blogs. It's dangerous to attribute motives to people, but I wouldn't be surprised if Svensson's blog was set up to facilitate his journalistic comeback. Besides, with 20,000 visitors each week, Politikerbloggen is miles away from the kind of traffic your blog can boast.