Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister
Monday
Oct 16, 2006
An investigative blogger has ended the short career of Sweden’s trade minister, Maria Borelius, after only eight days in office. Magnus Ljungkvist (in Swedish) revealed tax evasion by the minister of trade including not paying the payroll tax on a cleaning woman she hired in the 1990s.
In this case the blogger is also a journalist. Ljungkvist pitched the story to Aftonbladet which declined to run it. So on Saturday he blogged, according to another Swedish blog, Media Culpa (in English). Then Expressen reported the story as their own scoop — a day after Ljungkvist’s post and Borelius quickly resigned. Others, including the BBC, also followed up the story without any reference to the blogger.
Media Culpa has this quote from Johan Norberg at Bloggforum2004: “The day blogs bring down a member of the parliament (Riksdag) or a Minister, then the blog has become established.”
(Via Kristine Lowe)
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