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Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister

By Andrew Grant-Adamson • Oct 16th, 2006 • Category: Blogging, Journalism

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)

Andrew Grant-Adamson is Andrew Grant-Adamson is a journalist who now teaches a new generation of writers, subs and editors at the University of Westminster.
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7 Responses »

  1. Fleet Street 2.0 on October 16th, 2006 at 4:31 pm:

    Wordblog: Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister

  2. Martin Stabe » links for 2006-10-16 on October 16th, 2006 at 5:27 pm:

    [...] Wordblog: Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister An investigative reporter has forced the resignation of Sweden’s trade minister after running a story on his blog that a major paper turned down. (tags: journalism blogging blogs sweden) [...]

  3. Greenslade on October 17th, 2006 at 7:12 am:

    October 17 7:55 / / Permalink A story I missed, but it deserves recording. An investigative blogger has ended the career of Sweden’s trade minister, Maria Borelius, after just eight days in office. Magnus Ljungkvist revealed that the minister evaded paying tax. When Ljungkvist

  4. MySpace.com on October 19th, 2006 at 3:11 am:

    [...] Posted: October 18, 2006  7:05 PM Jenna wrote: blogs are ruining journalism. there are too many bloggers that consider themselves journalists. it annoys me. Doesn’t this guy deserve kudos? [...]

  5. Press Gazette Blogs - Fleet Street 2.0 » links for 2006-10-16 on August 30th, 2007 at 6:06 am:

    [...] Wordblog: Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister An investigative reporter has forced the resignation of Sweden’s trade minister after running a story on his blog that a major paper turned down. (tags: journalism blogging blogs sweden) [...]

  6. Borelius avslöjar: Pigreform bara för högavlönade at Magnus tankar on October 1st, 2007 at 6:04 am:

    [...] Wordblog » Blog Archive » Blog of rejected newspaper story brings down trade minister Pingback on Okt 16th, 2006 at [...]

  7. Swedish blogger ends minister's short career | Media | guardian.co.uk on November 6th, 2008 at 3:16 pm:

    [...] A story I missed, but it deserves recording. An investigative blogger has ended the career of Sweden’s trade minister, Maria Borelius, after just eight days in office. Magnus Ljungkvist revealed that the minister evaded paying tax. When Ljungkvist approached the newspaper Aftonbladet to run his story it rejected it. So he blogged the tale and then it took off, first in the paper Expressen, which claimed it as its own scoop. Borelius quickly resigned. (Via Wordblog) Posted by Roy Greenslade Tuesday October 17 2006 07.55 BST [...]

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