stockholm en

Readers re-write the journalists' stories

Waldemar — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:57:00 +01:00

Columbia Journalism Review points out an interesting development in Journalism 2.0 on Science 2.0.

Scientific American runs a story called Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?, but the article has not been published yet in its final version. Readers can post comments and questions that are incorporated in a final version, to be published in the May issue.

Open access journalism is an interesting proposition showing that the link to a media's community is growing ever stronger. Done correctly it might add significantly, while retaining relevant editorial control.

Merry Christmas from Stockholm

Waldemar — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 11:01:00 +01:00

God Jul (Merry Christmas) from a sunny winter-morning Stockholm.

It pleases us to extend our Season's Greetings to all babelians, and we also link to Adriano Farano's post about 2008.

Café Babel featured in Swedish media

Waldemar — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 10:56:00 +01:00

Waldemar Ingdahl writes about Café Babel in EuropaPosten, the monthly magazine of the European commission in Sweden.

In his article Ingdahl points out that a new Europe needs new forms of media. He describes the present situation where the ever more localized media have difficulties to describe the present developments in Europe. He further explains how participatory journalism and citizen journalism can provide new perspecitives. Now, Sweden can also take the chance to participate in the new Europe through Café Babel as Sweden also has a eurogeneration.

The capital of Scandinavia is on!

Waldemar — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:38:00 +02:00

The launch at Dront Restaurang & Bar in Stockholm was a pleasant affair. With a lovely buffé and good drinks the new Café Babel community was presented.

The concept of Web 2.0 is actually not that common in Sweden, most parts of our bloggosphere are, despite our reputation of having a rapid adoption of technology, rather similar to when it all started some years ago. Café Babel provides Swedish bloggers with a previously unimagined platform for expressing their ideas to a much larger audience while getting more hits.

Join the community by clicking here!

Café Babel gives a new addition to Swedish media, as we need to see more parts of Europe and understand other parts of the European experience than just what happens in the European institutions.

Now this cannot be achieved by proper funding, and the next step is to start up a drive for gaining the capital needed. But the launch evening gives good hope, and the partying went on.

The Babel launch is getting closer

Waldemar — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:54:00 +02:00

The launch of the Café Babel community is getting closer... Tuesday October 23rd is not far away...

All over Europe, new Café Babel groups are getting ready for the new expansion. Join us in Stockholm at Dront Restaurang & Bar.

Café Babel Stockholm now on Facebook

Waldemar — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:07:00 +02:00

Now we have our own group on Facebook!

If you are interested in Café Babel and Sweden, please do join our group. You will receive news and interesting information, while being able to receive invitations to events and participate in discussions with other Babelians.

Check out the event site for the launch of the Café Babel community while you are at it.

Celebrate with us in Stockholm

Waldemar — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:13:00 +02:00

Celebrate the Café Babel community with us in Stockholm.

Join us on October 23rd at 19h00 at Dront Restaurang & Bar on Regeringsgatan 88.

In order to sign up for the party on October 23rd, either e-mail wingdahl@cafebabel.com or click on this link and give your details.

Looking forward to celebrate!

Café Babel speaking at Stockholm University

Waldemar — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:06:00 +02:00

On Monday September 10th, Waldemar Ingdahl has been invited by Humanistiska Föreningen (the student association of the humanities) at Stockholm University to speak about the European Union, European media and to answer the question if there is a common European public debate.

Ingdahl will also describe the Eurogeneration and Café Babel.

The speech will be held at Gula Villan (the yellow villa) on the Frescati campus. Gula Villan is the headquarters of the student association and situated behind the university library.

The bar opens at 18h00 and Ingdahl's speech starts at 19h00

The European Union is not a peace project

Waldemar — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 11:17:00 +02:00

Some topics might actually prove too daunting to write about even in tomes. Barry Eichengreen, professor at the University of California at Berkeley has undertaken a difficult task in his book The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond. It entails the economic history of the whole of Europe (east and west), a comparison with the US and some considerations for the future. The result is a very clear and concise book, which also shakes up quite a few preconceptions.

Recovering from World War II was not as problematic as many think. Indeed many countries were blown back to their early 20th century GDPs, but Eichengreen contradicts the popular view that Europe had to start from scratch and free itself from its historical institutions. Eichengreen argues that it was precisely this historical continuity that enabled the recovery, and just a few years after the end of the war Europe’s production capacity was back at pre-war levels, even considering war-torn Germany.

It was not a time of technological breakthroughs, but of forceful recovery, in order to mobilize the resources unused under the war and implement innovations from the US. This was possible through the political consensus found in the corporativist collaboration between government, industry and the unions, and with banks ready to provide the corporations that had survived the war with investments from small time savers.

The lessons learned from the 1930’s were that unions had to agree to hold back the increases in wages and that governments understood that barriers to trade had to be eliminated. The European Economic Community (the forerunner of the present European Union) was born not primarily to promote peace, but because it was clear that Europe had been falling behind even before the war. The balkanized and closed economies were unable to exploit economies of scale and scope, and were slow to develop mass-production methods. The EEC provided a regional market of a scale appropriate to make best use of the new technologies received. With the assistance and the export markets of the US, this proved to be a very successful strategy.

But corporativist solutions started to flutter in the 70’s. The OPEC oil crisis was part of the problem but the main issue according to Eichengreen was that the post-war generations had forgotten the lessons of the past. Unions demanded higher wages in compensation for the recovery’s austerity, and militant strikes started to pressure the corporations’ profits and investments. Governments tried to calm down the economy by expanding the already extensive welfare state, worsening the high rate of inflation.

Meanwhile most of Eastern Europe had been agricultural economies, and was now pushed by the Soviet Union into rapid industrialization. For a time, incremental growth worked there too, but the region was poorly endowed with energy and industrial raw materials, and the industrial output was poorly tailored to the needs of the downstream users. Without the proper price mechanisms of a market economy, managers turned into minimizing plan targets while maximizing planned allocation resources. The economies started to stagnate in the 60’s, either trying autarky or reforming to “market socialism”. Both paths proved fruitless, and the reason the socialist system made it through the 70’s was the support of loans by Western banks delaying the ultimate collapse.

The US was able to capitalize on the new information technology, creating new global corporations and products opening up entirely new markets. While Europe struggled, the US asserted itself. Eichengreen gives great importance to the differences in financial institutions. Europe’s banks were geared towards supporting well-established corporations concentrated on producing “more of the same”, while the reliance of American corporations on venture capital in shares and bonds favoured what Eichengreen calls the “intensive growth” of start ups and innovations.

The 90’s proved to be a mixed success for Europe. Liberalizations and structural change proved difficult, and rigid labour markets, excessive public spending and high taxation are still present. But the EU was able to at least weed out some of the worst policies and succeeded in the very difficult integration of Eastern Europe by setting benchmarks to be achieved for accession.

Eichengreen is right on target in his final analysis. The structures and institutions of the European economies were better suited to incremental growth and to an environment were the challenge for growth was to fine-tune and apply existing technologies. They were tailored for a world with little international competition, not to the close integration and intense competition following globalization. The institutions of the EU were designed for a half a dozen countries with complementary economic structures in order to achieve limited economic goals- expanding heavy industry, liberalize trade, deregulating product markets. They were not designed to support a huge organization of 27 member states with widely different economic structures, political cultures and visions of the future. Neither was it designed to cope with the wide variety of policy issues covered by the EU today.

Eichengreen foresees that the continuing economic integration and technological advancement will make Europe adapt to a more dynamic model, but that it would be unwise to merely copy the US. After all, Eichengreen writes, there were many voices saying that the US should copy Japan in the early 80's. Today, with the decline of the Japanese economy, this seems absurd. Hence Europe has to acknowledge that the situation has changed and start thinking in new directions.

Pingat på Intressant.se

Sweden and the Iraqi immigration

Waldemar — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:24:00 +02:00

Café Babel Stockholm provides its first content to cafebabel.com.

It is Waldemar Ingdahl that writes the View from the ground section Demonstrations against closing the door to Iraqis in Not another Nordic Malta- yet by Thomas Huddleston.

In the article Huddleston and Ingdahl write about the Iraqi refugees in Sweden. While the Iraqi refugee crisis is global in scope, only 4% have sought protection in Europe, mostly in historical safe-haven Sweden. Recently Sweden called for help from the EU and tightened its asylum rules, fearful of shouldering the burden for a migration crisis on a potentially Mediterranean scale. Why should Europe’s small share be such a big deal?

Interview with Commissioner Margot Wallström

Waldemar — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:56:00 +02:00

Café Babel Stockholm interviews the Swedish Commissioner Margot Wallström on our Swedish language blog.

Margot Wallström gives her views on democracy, how to use the blog to get feedback from European citizens, and her opinions on Café Babel and citizen journalism.

She sees many of the current developments on the Internet in a positive light, and is quite fascinated by the newly opened Swedish embassy in the virtual world Second Life. Commissioner Wallström does not discount the opportunity of opening a Second Europe, a point of information in Second Life. The main factor seems to be budget constraints.

Tobacco free day: the alternative

Waldemar — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:53:00 +02:00

Today is tobacco-free day in Europe, with journalists doing a traditional scan of which countries that have instigated a ban on smoking in the public areas. The public often gets the impression that tobacco control policies are clearcut. In reality, a debate regarding tobacco and public health policies has been brewing as an undercurrent.

Recently, an interesting and controversial scientific conference in Warsaw was held on the issue of the harm reduction perspective.

Policies in Europe regarding alcohol, tobacco and drugs are most often instituted with a prohibitionist approach ("quit or die") but the harm reduction perspective takes another approach to public health.

Discussing the use of the harm reduction strategy on legal drugs is a relatively new development, but it is obvious that it has been fruitful in the area of tobacco control.

The harm reduction approach states that it is unlikely to rid the world completely of nicotine in the near future, and despite the recent regulations worldwide tobacco consumption has not decreased. Do we wish to punish sinners or help people, that is the issue at the core of the harm reduction debate.

Nicotine has in itself proven relatively less harmful, it is the smoke- the combustion in the oral cavity of tobacco that is the greatest risk with smoking. People smoke for the nicotine, but get killed by the smoke. The question is then, in the harm reduction perspective, are there less harmful alternatives for nicotine delivery?

There are three conditions for tobacco control programs that are to be met for a new product

1) It prevents initiation

2) Assists tobacco cessation

3) No environmental effects

and one might add that it should reduce the harm suffered for the smoker.

The best example so far in harm reduction is Sweden where more and more men are using a smokeless suckling tobacco know as "snus" (presently 22% of the population) and less and less men smoke (currently down to 14%). Among adolecents boys (16 years of age) daily smoking is 4% and snus use 11%. This reflects itself in the low figures for lung cancer with Sweden's 22.6 cases a year/ 100.000 inhabitants compared with Belgium's 69.9 cases a year/100.000 inhabitants (the lowest and highest rates in Europe respectively). Sweden also scores the lowest number of oral cancer cases, in Europe with Switzerland ranking highest.

A switch from cigarettes to smokeless tobacco, like snus, was calculated at the conference to reduce the harm by at least 90% and even more if nicotine replacement products were more widely accepted or legal.

So, why isn't this alternative to cigarettes discussed? The reason is that the European Union banned the sale of snus in all of Europe, with Sweden receiving an exception when it entered in 1995. Today the sale of snus is only legal in Sweden.

The harm reduction perspectives introduces a continuum of risk when it comes to regulation of nicotine delivery systems. Today, the less safe product, the cigarette is the least regulated. This is also because of ignorance with both the public and policy makers, as most associate the reduction of risk with a safer cigarette, not with smokeless tobacco or other nicotine replacement products.

The discussion about harm reduction is already rocking the public health community, where grave accusations are flying of this being a ploy big tobacco companies to keep people using some form of tobacco product. But discussion is unlikely to just go away, as the news of the Swedish alternative is spread around Europe.

Citizen Journalism: Kristine Löwe

Waldemar — Sun, 20 May 2007 12:04:00 +02:00

On Café Babel Stockholm's Swedish blog we have had a series of interviews, with people from various types of media, regarding citizen journalist.

As Café Babel is a good example of citizen journalism, we wanted to explore what new opportunities it offers to both writers and professional journalists. Will it provide media with new talent, or will it drive a further fragmentisation? Will it provide a new type of voice in Europe's media?

Kristine Løwe is a Norwegian freelance journalist and writes an excellent blog Kristine Lowe on media, communications and current affairs. As Kristine has had many years of experience of writing in England, she opted to answer Café Babel Stockholm's question in English.

Café Babel Stockholm There is much talk about citizen journalism today. Is there something to it, that we are seeing the birth of a new form of collaborative journalism, or is it just a hype? Will citizen journalism ever be able to compete with professional journalists?

Kristine Løwe I think both blogs and citizen journalism can and will supplement, transform and serve as a healty correction to journalism, but not supplant it. Citizen journalism and blogs broaden the picture and the debate. This can be especially true in conflicts and under totalitarian regimes where it's difficult for MSM (mainstream media) to gain access. Reporters Without Borders say that in the field of human rights, it is citizen journalists and not professional journalists who have been responsible for the most reliable reports and information – the information that has most upset the governments.

However, I think you do need a very strong motivation or sense of community to take the time and effort to do citizen journalism that can compete with the MSM. Good, well researched writing that can make a difference takes time, and sometimes money.This means that I have yet to be convinced that news organisations will be able to rely on 'free' citizen journalism on a large scale. I know there are a few local US newspapers built entirely on citizen journalism. Which makes sense, cause the sense of community would be strong, but I think this is difficult to scale to e.g. national publications. Of course there are quite a few attempts at doing this in different ways, e.g. Jay Rosen's projects, which will be interesting to watch, but fundamentally I also think that 'citizen' articles and pictures used by big media organisations should be paid, if only symbolically, for the effort. I also think that citizen journalism needs direction and some form of moderation, as do successful communities, to keep the debate respectful, open and constructive.

Media is undergoing such dramatic changes at the moment, and you see so many MSMs that desperately try to jump on every new bandwagon that comes along, without understanding what they are getting themselves into.

Yes, a lot of the initiatives we see now, in terms of virtual worlds, citizen journalism, blogs, pods, vods etc will fall flat to the ground, mostly because those who launched them did not take the time to get acquainted with the basic rules of what they were getting themselves into. A lot of these things are over-hyped, because a lot of people try to be trendy by dropping all the right words or doing all these things they do not understand, without getting the fundamentals right.

We are seeing big important changes though, important to see past the hype and try to keep an open mind. Again I think citizen journalism will serve as a supplement to the MSM, and transform it in the process.

CBS Will the paper edition of the newspaper keep its current status and prestige with the readers and in the journalist profession?

KL That would be strange wouldn't it? Especially seeing how both advertisement money and readers are emigrating online. I think and hope perceptions will change as papers start doing more innovative stuff online, become more interactive and more fully fledged media, not just digital versions of their paper copies (as too many are), or something that papers think they 'have to do' to keep up with the flock, but lack vision for.

I think journalism schools are really lagging behind here as well though. Both because lectureres do not understand what is happening and the impact of it, but also because the schools lack the financial resources to change the way they teach journalism.

CBS Will citizen journalism and the Web provide a better venue for 'the good narrative' or will we see even more of quick news?

KL In general I think people skim more than read online, so online requires a very different way of writing.

Speed is very important, as online papers are competing with television, it has to be instant and fresh. Still, with so many doing instant and fresh there is always a niche for in depth journalism. The Guardian is a good example; constantly competing to break the news first online, but also with in depth analysis and commentary like Comment is free and Roy Greenslade. But of course, even the latter has to be a lot quicker than commentary in the paper edition of the newspaper, so this requires more speed too. That's talking specifically about newspapers though. If you look at the developments in the blogosphere, where many literary blogs based on good stories have huge audiences, it would be foolish to say there is not a market for that - it's that famous long tail, isn't it.

CBS What do you think of the authors' rights to their creations today? Are they too strong or too weak?

KL No strong opinions. In terms of newspapers they are often too weak, in that the papers demand full copyright for ever and ever. In general i support the creative commons licensing.

CBS It is often said today that journalists are becoming more and more easily replaceable today and that work conditions are becoming worse. Is there some truth to that statement? If that is the case, are some types of journalism excepted?

KL I think that is correct. It is such a popular profession, often because people think it will make them famous, that you do often feel like you are replacable. Media has always been a fast changing environment though, not really the place to seek if you like your routines and getting a ticket to that one job for life (although some papers used to issue them).

However, I think the demand for journalists who are comfortable with the new multimedia environment, and at home with it's tools, is increasing. There are not too many of those journalists around. Also, at the same time as MSM is changing due to new technology, so are the opportuntities for journalists. Why not just go out and establish your own brand, start blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, or set up your own venture, now that the threshold for entry, both in terms of technology skills and money, has been lowered so much?

CBS What is your opinion of the situation for freelancers today and in the future?

KL I am actually more optimistic today than I was five years ago. I think there are plenty of oppotunities out there, you just need to go out and get them.

Café Babel blog starting in Sweden

Waldemar — Fri, 11 May 2007 18:08:00 +02:00

For a long time us Swedes have been able to read Café Babel, but up until now we have not had any activities in Sweden. A Swedish Café Babel community is a good way to open up Sweden (and lets not forget the Swedish-speaking Finland) to the rest of Europe.

On this blog we will offer you comments, articles, interviews from a European perspective on what happens in Sweden. Keep reading for further information.

Welcome!

Waldemar Ingdahl