The court fined him for logging onto the intranet of Sweden's then governing party, but an expert on freedom of expression says the journalist was just doing his journalistic duty and calls the verdict a serious blow for freedom of information.

On Friday, former Expressen reporter Niklas Svensson was convicted of data trespass and fined 40 days' wages, totalling 8,000 SEK for his involvement in the 'hacking scandal' that rocked Sweden in the run-up to last year's parliamentary election. However, despite early day conspiracy theories, there was no actual hacking involved.

Svensson was given the log-in details to the Socialdemocratic Party's intranet, Säpnet, by Liberal Party youth activist Per Jodenius who had obtained them from a Social Democratic Youth Party activist (who had revealed them because he thought it funny that someone used a stupid nickname both for username and password). Both youth activists were convicted for data trespass and fined.

"A schoolboy prank that got out of hand, or the low point of Swedish political debate? Sweden's newspapers are divided," writes The Local. Anders R Olsson, an author and expert on freedom of expression, writing in trade journal Journalisten, calls the 'scandal' a catastrophe for journalism: "This confirms that the constitutionally embedded freedom of information isn't valid in the IT-society." Olsson refers to the paragraph below (hope to find time to translate this in the morning), and concludes that Svensson was within his rights, as he didn't commit any crimes to obtain the log-in details for Säpnet.

Tryckfrihetsförordningens portalparagraf (1 kap 1 §) avslutas med: ”Vidare skall envar äga rätt att, om ej annat följer av denna förordning, anskaffa uppgifter och underrättelser i vad ämne som helst för att offentliggöra dem i tryckt skrift eller för att lämna meddelande som avses i föregående stycke.”

Talking about freesheet wars, is it entirely far-fetched to assume the Swedish freesheet war is partially to blame for Metro International's disappointing first quarter results? The company's CEO, Pelle Törnberg, has said resignations in the marketing department and poor management is to blame for Metro's lacklustre performance in Sweden, identified as one of the company's problem areas, but in any case, the plummeting stock price is expected to make Metro an even more attractive acquisition object, and comes in handy for potential suitors – should the company be for sale.

Last week Dagens Naeringsliv speculated that Norwegian Schibsted was courting the Swedish freesheet giant, eagerly eyeing an opportunity to marry its online expertise with Metro's freesheet expertise, a rumour Schibsted's CEO, Kjell Aamot, declined to deny or confirm. Schibsted's freesheets are of course bigger than Metro's in both France and Spain, but in Sweden Metro is still in poll position among the freesheets, and swallowing a key competitor might increase ad revenues in all markets where Schibsted and Metro are head-to-head.

One could argue that Mecom's Dato was a rushed, badly planned, ill-informed product: it was the least well-received of all the new Danish freesheets and in direct competition to Mecom's top paid-for Danish title, Berlingske, as well as its traffic distributed freesheet Urban. But could it be that it is the distribution form, rather than quality, brand name or ability to carve out a niche for oneself, that is on trial in the Danish freesheet war?

When Dato folded, or 'merged' with Urban, last week, Lasse Bolander, managing director of Mecom's Danish division, explained the paper's failure thus: "We thought there was a market for door-to-door freesheet distribution. There isn't."

That, of course, is a very convenient explanation for Mecom, as it removes the whole quality dimension, but there is anecdotal evidence that the explanation isn't entirely far-fetched. Distribution has been a problem from the outset of the Danish freesheet war. All the new door-to-door distributed freesheets have been struggling to gain access to Copenhagen's blocks of flats, threatened with legislation for not respecting consumers who don't want freesheets on their doorsteps, and all of them have recently succumbed to distributing papers in transport hotspots as well as door-to-door.

Interestingly, though it was Dagsbrun's pledge to launch its quality door-to-door distributed freesheet-concept internationally, with Denmark as the first stop, that forced the whole freesheet war, the company's latest launch, Boston NOW, is traffic distributed, and it is in the US. When I talked to a company executive last year, Sweden was singled out as the most likely target market after Denmark, to be followed by various European markets – a strategy enthusiastically promoted in many media outlets. A minor change of strategy, or a sign that the company has given up on promoting this particular distribution model outside of Iceland?

Mecom-owned Dato was bound to fail because it was a defensive move, and a very rushed one at that. This, in essence, is also why I think 24timer will be the next Danish freesheet to call it quits.

After Dato merged with Urban this week, Lasse Bolander, Berlingske Officin's managing director admitted to Berlingske that a key reason for launching Dato last August was indeed, as widely assumed, the announced arrival of Icelandic-owned Nyhedsavisen, which they saw as a threat to the market for [paid-for] morning newspapers, including Berlingske Tidende. In this situation they felt attack would be the best defence.

They say great minds think alike. Now I don't know Bolander or Lars Henrik Munch, JP/Politiken's CEO, well enough to pronounce any verdict on their minds, but it would surprise me if the reasoning at JP/Politiken wasn't much the same (its new freebie, 24timer, hit the streets a mere two days after Dato was announced). In other words: bleed'em dry.

Except, of course, that didn't happen, or has yet to happen, mainly due to the deep pockets of Icelandic Baugur, the biggest shareholder in Dagsbrun (who owns 365 Media, who owns 365 Media Scandinavia, who owns... well, you get my drift). More importantly, Nyhedsavisen's explicit ambition is to be a quality freesheet that competes with the paid-for morning papers, rather than other freesheets, whereas Dato and 24timer were classic freesheets that ended up eating into the readership and advertisement revenues of their owners paid-for titles.

Some Danes, like Mads Øvslien (writing in Berlingske) even complained that a strange side effect of the freesheet war was how the freesheets were delivered bright and early in the morning, but subscribers were left waiting for the paid-for titles from those very same media companies. He concluded: "I don't know many businesses that survive by focusing on their peripheral products at the expense of their core products."

Now that Dato is no more, JP/Politiken will also have to pay more for distributing 24timer, which previously was delivered to Danish households together with Dato. Still, according the latest readership figures I've seen, 24timer is Denmark's most read door-to-door distributed freesheet. If we include the traffic-distributed ones, it's the third most read free paper, after MetroXpressen and Urban – and, now that Dato is gone, Nyhedsavisen is the least read.

How come I still think 24timer will be the next victim in the freesheet war? Because while both 24timer and Nyhedsavisen are steadily growing their respective readerships, it's the paid-for titles that's paying the price – and burning off a fortune to subsidise a freesheet that steals readers from your paid-for titles, as is the case with JP/Politiken, who owns top paid-for titles such as Politiken and Jyllandsposten, doesn't make much sense.

Unless, of course the bosses at JP/Politiken still believe they can exhaust Nyhedsavisen's finances by doing so, or that Nyhedsavisen is too dangerous left unencumbered by competition in the free door-to-door segment.

With four major Danish freesheets left after Dato merged with Urban yesterday, experts still think the market is too crowded and one more freesheet needs to go. Dato is said to have lost at least 100m DKK - setting aside 400m DKK to fight the freesheet war was one of Montgomery's first actions when he finalised the acquisition or Orkla Media last year - and half of its journalists will be made redundant.

Who's next? My bet is actually on JP/Politiken's 24timer, though it seems, with circulation figures approaching half a million, to be doing very well. Dato was bound to fail because it was a defesive move, and a very rushed one at that. This, in essence, is also why I think 24timer will be the next Danish freesheet to call it quits. More in a separate post later... (Since I'm self-employed, my days just snowball out of control sometimes: this is one of those days, not much brainpower left at the end of it).

As I predicted at the start of this year, Dato – the first new door-to-door distributed freesheet to hit the streets at the start of the Danish freesheet war last August – has become the second free title to be withdrawn from the market. Berlingske Officin, Mecom's Danish division, has wisely decided to merge Dato with Urban, the newspaper group's pre-freesheet-war freebie, and Dato will cease to exist as an independent newspaper as of today (via Berlingske, in Danish).

Back in January I wrote (6th paragraph) that "Mecom-owned Berlingske Officin already has one well-established traffic distributed freesheet with a distinct profile, Urban, why then sink money into a door-to-door distributed one which had the worst readership figures of all the major freesheets in recent polls? One new freebie has already thrown in the towel ... My bet is that Dato will be the next to go, at least that would make most sense if logic has anything to do with it."

Mecom journalists may not be too impressed by their company's latest cost-cutting plans, but investors like what they see: Market Insider reports that "ABN Amro raises its price target to 99p from 82p as it assesses the impact of a series of deals costing £570m and which include the takeover of Berliner Zeitung."

Striking journalists at Danish Mecom newspapers B.T. and Berligske Tidende resumed work on Tuesday, following consultations in the morning at Berlingske and in the afternoon at B.T.

Journalists feel something is rotten in Mecom's Danish and Norwegian fiefdoms...

Employees at two Danish Mecom newspapers on strike today
Journalists at Mecom-owned B.T. and Berlingske Tidende decided to lay down their work yesterday, after the details of an expected redundancy plan were announced. Five journalists are to be axed at B.T. and 20 – 25 at Berlingske Tidende.
B.T. staff claim the redundancies mean the paper no longer will be able to deliver a competitive product. The journalists are particularly upset that the redundancies are non-negotiable and will be implemented immediately, rather than over the next two years as originally planned (via Berlingske). Propaganda reports that neither of the two papers will be published today. The Danish protests come hot on the heels of last week's uproar among Mecom's Norwegian employees:

Employees say Mecom cuts represent ruthless gamble with Norwegian local newspapers
Just back from their Easter holidays last week, employees in Mecom's Norwegian branch, Edda Media, were presented with the latest update on redundancies - and they didn't much like what they were told. The number, 200, had been known since Christmas, when an extra 80 positions were added to the planned 120 just before the festive season descended on the country. But employees were outraged that 28 of the jobs axed will be editorial positions, widely seen as contrary to Montgomery's previous promises, and at odds with what is perceived as Edda Media's very healthy 12,4 per cent profit margin for 2006. This led to numerous loud protests, including this one from newspapers in my home county, where Edda Media generated 43m NOK in profits last year:

"This is an immoral exploitation and draining of the newspaper companies. Everything is done to satisfy foreign capital. The cynical hunt for profit endangers the media's civic responsibilities and represents a ruthless gamble with Norwegian local newspapers... Good colleagues are facing an uncertain future, not because the demands of financial reality, but entirely to enable the debt-slave Montgomery to make an even bigger profit."

Monty to sell his Norwegian media assets or enter into a joint venture with Norwegians?
Norwegian media companies A-pressen and Dagbladet were widely seen as the preferred bidders when former Orkla media, now renamed Edda media, was put up for sale last year – even though strong synergy effects between Dagbladet / A-pressen and former Orkla media would have meant substantial redundancies (it was speculated that at least 400 jobs, twice of what Mecom now has decided to axe in Norway, would have to go if A-pressen won the bid).

Despite these somewhat bleak prospects, Kjetil Haanes, an employee representative for Edda Media, recently expressed hopes that Monty might soon be forced to sell parts of his Norwegian newspaper assets to Norwegian media companies like Dagbladet or A-pressen, thereby securing a much more 'sound' ownership situation. His reasoning? Monty has promised to pay his shareholders dividends in 2008 and needs to free up more capital this year in order to accomplish that. Seems Haanes must be imagining an all favourable situation where no synergies, and other 'undesirable' effects any longer exists - which, heaven forbid, would add up to something very much resembling a benefit of Mecom winning the bid for former Orkla Media.

The redundancy packages in Edda Media were negotiated last spring, before Mecom's takeover, and are "the best ever in the Orkla/ Edda Media system," according to Haanes.

A shooting at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg Virginia has reportedly left over twenty people dead. Robin Hamman looked around for coverage from students and staff on campus, and the results are, well, staggering? This was tough reading for me. A watershed of sorts, absolutely – certainly a much more devastating, disturbing read than most newspaper articles would be...

Update 17/04 (6am): Bloggers Blog offers an overview of sites detailing blogs and cellphone coverage of the tragedy, while Jeff Jarvis muses on the video from the scene made by student Jamal Albaughouti, and the students' efforts to keep student site PlanetBlacksburg.com constantly updated with impressions and news.

I know using a social bookmarking site would make it a lot easier to keep up with things, but since my laptop is instrumental to how I earn my living, I am, perhaps irrationally, paranoid about setting my security settings to accept all cookies (which these sites demand). I am on del.icio.us, but not too frequent as I only use it when I'm in my office and not on the road or working from home. Anyway, here's a few of those posts I thoroughly enjoyed this week, but found no time to blog about:

Google acquires Internet (via Adriana's furl feed):
MAY 12, 2017 - BUSINESSWIRE. Mountain View-based search giant Google Inc today announced they’ve acquired the internet for the astounding sum of $2,455.5 billion in cash... In a conference call earlier today, Larry Page explained the strategy behind the acquisition. “We realized it’s not very cost-effective to buy the internet in smaller portions.”

Hope for local TV (Doc Searls on IT Garage):
The TV news system isn't broken. It's just one system struggling to thrive in the midst of many new systems that will only get more and more useful — both to TV news operations and to viewers.

Online communities: media companies focus too much on technology (Kevin Anderson for The Press Gazette):
After years of resistance, newspapers are opening up to what New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the "people formerly known as the audience". But too often, they focus on the technology and fail both in terms of content and culture, dooming their community efforts from the start... Ask yourself: What ties your community together? If you don't know, that's your first problem. Get out from behind the desk. Talk to people about what they are talking about.

Confused of Calcutta: Learning from comments people leave on my blog:
I often get asked why I blog, and you’ve seen enough of my answers before. And it’s strange, how someone’s eyes glaze over when I come to the bit where I say “and I learn from my blog, from the comments people leave”. It’s the sort of look reserved for people who say “I read Playboy for its literary content”…

Editors Weblog looks at newspapers' comment dilemmas:
The News&Observer notes newspapers' ‘hypocrisy’ in requiring print letters to be signed and letting online comments be anonymous. Should free comments on all online stories be allowed at all?

The 'hackers' in Sweden's most recent 'Watergate', which saw several Liberal Party activists, and a journalist, unlawfully log onto the intranet of the country's governing party in the run-up to last year's election, went on trial this week:

At the end of the trial, the public prosecutor called for two of its central figures - Liberal Party press officer Niki Westerberg and Per Jodenius, former press secretary for the party's youth wing (LUF) - to be given suspended sentences. Comparing their actions to industrial espionage, the prosecutor said that it was particularly grave in the lead up to a general election and represented a threat to the entire democratic system... The actions of each of the three other defendants - Niklas Svensson, LUF's regional chairman Nicklas Lagerlöf, and young Social Democrat Niklas Sörman - were not considered as serious. The prosecutor has called for each of them to be fined... "My source told me that I had been given the details to dig up scandals, or news, about the Social Democrats," said Niklas Svensson (via The Local).

He added that he never used any information from the Social Democrat's intranet for a story, and, in general, never took instructions from his sources. Since the scandal Svensson has reinvented himself as a blogger-commentator-journalist, and he and fellow blogger Daniel Alsén blogged about the trial on Politikerbloggen (in Swedish).

The court is expected to announce its verdict on 27 April.

Tim O'Reilly, the Web 2.0 guru who almost created a firestorm of his own when he recently called for a Blogger's Code of Conduct, complete with badges and all, in the wake of the Kathy Sierra firestorm, tells Wired he has changed his mind (interesting article, worth reading in full):

I've come to think the call for a code of conduct was a bit misguided. A lot of sites have their own terms of service that are a lot like what I proposed for the code of conduct. And I was just saying, let's get the best of the breed, let's figure it out, so somebody who wants to have one of these doesn't have to think it all up for themselves. People have interpreted that as a call for some kind of MPAA ratings system or something. That's not at all what I was proposing. I was proposing a modular set of terms of service, so somebody could say, "I don't want this kind of behavior." Now, a lot of people already do that, so it's really much ado about nothing.

The risks of NOT engaging
Meanwhile, journalists at both The New York Times (NYT), and the normally blog-savy Guardian, used O'Reilly's proposal as a hook for attacking the nasty world of blogs. In a rather ill-informed piece for The Guardian's Comment is Free, Jonathan Freedland claimed "The blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males." I often wonder if journalists who write articles like this and the NYT piece ever read blogs, and if so, which blogs: yes there are some trolls around, but they are rare exceptions, not the rule (for the UK, maybe they only read Guido, who does attract an unusual high number of trolls in the comment section).

These ignorant attacks on the blogosphere only serve to strengthen the perception of MSM as Big Bad Media that has shut itself off from the community it is supposed to serve. Luckily, there are some excellent commentators out there, like this one on Freedland's piece, who can put the house right:

"Must have been so nice to be a journalist or commentator in the old days. Just lock what you say in print and damn the masses. Times have changed. You can lock the doors, but then there’ll just be you." (via Guardian's blogs editor Kevin Anderson, who called it the best comment ever and said: "Certainly there are risks to opening up and engaging, but this comment succinctly highlights the risks of doing nothing.)

The conflicts between journalism and blogging
Interestingly, Martin Stabe, normally a top-notch blogger, wrote a piece about the 'code-of-conduct-debate' that was so journalistic that BBC Today invited him to defend the code, which he was actually against, on air. Must have been a weak moment where his journalistic training got the better of the blogger in him, can't say it hasn't happened to me.

I linked to Adriana's excellent refutation of the call for a code of conduct for bloggers on Sunday, but since then the issue has gathered a lot of momentum, and many more excellent posts have added to the arguments against it. If you missed the debate, and the precedent that sparked it (this time around, I might add), Bloggers Blog has a good round-up post here. Here's a few of my favourite posts on the issue:

Duncan Riley:
Web 2.0 guru and the once credible Tim O’Reilly has followed up on his threats to unleash weapons of mass stupidity on the world, posting live once and for all a draft copy of his “Bloggers Code of Conduct” that he’s hoping to impose voluntarily on over 200 million bloggers world wide, then probably by force in countries stupid enough to think this is all a good idea (and yes, Australia will probably be top of that list, it is the Nanny State after all).

Not to mention what Scandinavian countries could do with this.

Dave Winer:
We all seem to be speaking with one voice today, this code of conduct idea is not a good one. Of course the NY Times couldn't resist putting it on page one since it confirms their assertion that the blogosphere is a bad place [me: under the headline: "A call for manners in the world of nasty blogs"]. Maybe next time well-intentioned people will avoid the rush to perform for the big publications.

Neil McIntosh:
Seriously, my biggest fear is this kind of stuff tars a huge group of people with a rather nasty brush - "you blog, therefore you are a misogynist", for instance. That's the kind of thing that gets repeated in a million newspaper stories, puts people off reading or joining in, and just begs legislators in to have a look around before taking some horrifically misguided action. There's probably a bureaucrat with a pen twitching in Brussels right now.

Jeff Jarvis:
This effort misses the point of the internet, blogs, and even of civilized behavior. They treat the blogosphere as if it were a school library where someone — they’ll do us the favor — can maintain order and control. They treat it as a medium for media. But as Doc Searls has taught me, it’s not. It’s a place. And when I moved into the place that is my town, I didn’t put up a badge on my fence saying that I’d be a good neighbor (and thus anyone without that badge is, de facto, a bad neighbor). I didn’t have to pledge to act civilized. I just do. And if I don’t, you can judge me accordingly. Are there rules and laws? Yes, the same ones that exist in worlds physical or virtual: If I libel or defame you on the streetcorner or in a paper or on a screen, the recourse is the same. But I don’t put up another badge on my fence saying I won’t libel you. I just don’t.

Then of course, there are the legal implications of this proposed 'code of conduct', e.g. the impact banning anonymous comments will have on bloggers in places like China, Iran and Iraq. More on this in Jarvis' full post.

I count myself very lucky, privileged even, to have had a great number of fantastic mentors in my life – people who have supported, guided, encouraged and inspired me to realise my dreams and talents. People who have helped me become the person I am today, and whom I always will feel very grateful to have known. One of them, perhaps my first mentor, and probably the first person who encouraged me to make writing my profession, passed away in the wee hours today, after many years spent gradually disappearing into the land of forgetfulness.

I know she felt she had had more than her share of adventures and blessings many years ago, and would have preferred to go much earlier than she did, so my only regret today is that I don't have any exquisite wine or champagne in the house to pour myself a glass and raise a toast for a life well lived, as surely she deserves and would have wished (since it's Easter Sunday, all the shops are closed). So as a substitute for the real thing, here's a symbolic toast from people I know appreciated her spirit (more about this remarkable woman, and our last celebration of her life and achievements, here):

Adriana: Code of conduct is for bullies
... to help them, not to stop them. Bullies like to control other people's behaviour and compulsory codes are a great tool. If people are causing harm to others, there are laws to stop them. Compulsory rules, codes of conduct don't make people civil or polite, they remove yet another layer of freedom from our lives and relationships.

Adriana (via Doc Searls)
"isms" are for people who don't have blogs.
Quid pro quo is how control freaks have relationships.

Matt Locke looks at The Economist's crowd-sourcing project, Project Red Stripe, and offers plenty of constructive advice based BBC's experiences with open innovation projects (via David Black):

... having an open conversation means that people won't hesitate to tell you where you're going wrong, and will suggest improvements. The Red Stripe team are actually being pretty good at this, but are maybe still coming across as a bit precious. There are some interesting comments on their blog referring to other comments about the IP issues, but the tone is a little 'us and them' - they point to comments anonymously and ridicule a few submissions, which is huge mistake - if you've got a private submission process, don't then decide to reveal a couple of ideas, even anonymously, to take the piss out of them. It looks like you're treating your participants as idiots, and treating their ideas (and IP) with casual disdain. Overall, the blog has the tone of people speaking to a community, rather than being part of that community.

Food for thought from JP Rangaswami. Commenting on this sentiment:

Don’t worry if you’re too busy in the morning to catch the segment. Someone will upload the Sierra/Locke summit segment to YouTube within an hour of its initial broadcast, and the analyses should appear online shortly afterwards

Rangaswami writes:

For a while now we have had news events being made available on YouTube, in effect time-shifting news on to the Web. In itself this is nothing new. What feels new to me is the expectation that something will be made available on YouTube or its equivalent... like in:

I won’t buy a book until I can Look Inside it. I won’t record something that I expect will appear on YouTube or its equivalent, but I will plan to watch it on YouTube. I won’t buy an album until I have listened to sample tracks via the web, be it iTunes or an equivalent. I won’t meet someone for the first time unless I have Googled them, maybe even Linked them In.

Read the full post here.

Imagine your're putting together a documentary, or just a news story for the screen, and all the people you feature in your story blog the entire transcript, or their key quotes, for fear your editing should misrepresent their positions. That's exactly what happened when CNN put together their story, Dark side of the Net, on the recent firestorm in the wake of death threats against A-list blogger Kathy Sierra (Creating Passionate Users).

After he let himself be interviewed for the programme, Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger, blogged about CNN as the knot in his stomach, carefully putting his quotes in context and talking about his fear of loosing control of his words. Kathy Sierra and Chris Locke, another Cluetrain co-author, who had been on opposite ends of the firestorm, put out a joint statement in advance of the programme, detailing their positions and warning against those who may cease upon the incident as an excuse to regulate or limit free speech and open debate.

Adding to the wariness before the show aired, Adriana Lukas, blogger and social media consultant, wrote: "Let's see what CNN does with the Dark Side of the Net piece. I have a feeling many will be watching and immediately providing their side of the story. The light may end up shining on the dark side of journalism..."

Now the story has aired and it seems CNN did a fairly decent job of putting the programme together, though Weinberger has yet to comment in full, (I haven't had an opportunity to watch it, see the clip here), but this story is a perfect illustration of 1) the staggering lack of trust in mainstream media 2) how the publishing revolution, internet revolution, whatever you choose to call it, empowers individuals to tell their side of the story and creates radical transparency.

In this way, media coverage can be put on trial every bit of the way, though of course, as long as there is no taped record, this 'opportunity' is also open for abuse and you can get word-against-word scenarios. That, I think, only serves to strengthen the need for good method reports and continually justifying, and being transparent about, editorial decisions.

Update 05/04: even BBC's Richard Sambrook recently took the opportunity to expand on this positions and answer criticism on his blog after his appeareance on Iain Dale's show on 18Doughty Street web TV, thereby creating yet another window for continuing the debate. A future trend?