World's oldest newspaper goes online only
By Erika Ingvald Posted Jul 1 2007
The world’s oldest published newspaper, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar (PoIT), has ditched paper to go Web only. A historical line has been broken and editorial content has been cancelled as a result of the change. On the flip side is a greater availability of the core content of public notifications — now free to the readership to search and read — with lower publishing costs.
PoIT is Sweden’s official newspaper for public notifications. According to Swedish law, it must contain announcements from the government and other agencies. Kristina, Queen of Sweden, and her advisor Axel Oxenstierna founded PoIT in 1645 to present a Swedish view on international incidents and to prevent rumors from spreading about the Queen or government officials. In 1791 Gustav III, then King of Sweden, gave ownership to the Swedish Academy, which still owns the publication. On January 1, 2007, the Academy authorized the Swedish Companies Registration Office, previously part of the Swedish Patent and Registration Office, to publish PoIT.
“We paid about 5,000 SKR ($700 USD) for our last announcement before the transfer,” says Dick Levin, CEO of Wiking Mineral, a fairly new startup in the mining business and one of the Swedish organizations that are obliged by law to publish their notifications in PoIT. “After the transfer to Web only, it costs about 40 SKR (less than $6 USD),” he says. “We appreciate this since it is one of a very few costs we can’t influence. Furthermore, the procedure is much smoother, and we reach our stock owners much easier, so to us, all of this is positive.”
But for some, the change has its downsides. “This is a part of Sweden and the world’s cultural heritage that is lost,” says former PoIT editor Hans Holm, who is still with Edita Sverige, the former publisher of PoIT. “So is readability since no editing is performed on the announcements.
“It has been coming and going through times, and we reintroduced it in the year of 2000 through publishing relevant news on legal and economic issues to our readership,” says Holm. “It was appreciated, and among others, we had contributions from former Swedish ministers of finance Erik Åsbrink and Kjell-Olov Feldt.”
The Swedish Companies Registration Office and its clients used to account for more than 50 percent of the announcements in the PoIT print version. For that, the SCRO paid $3.4 million yearly to Norstedts, a private Swedish publishing house that published PoIT on a license from the Swedish Academy until Dec. 31, 2006. In turn, Norstedts paid the Academy a $1.72 million yearly licensing fee.
The Academy used the money to finance the development and publishing of the Swedish Academy Glossary, the (unofficial) norm for the spelling and inflection of Swedish words. The Academy’s ownership has been questioned from time to time by the government and the parliament, especially by the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry’s main interest is that Sweden has a smooth channel for the publication of legal announcements. It has been questioned whether PoIT under the Academy offers the requested service level. The Academy’s agenda falls under language and literature, not legal frameworks concerning, for instance, companies and how to make them publicly known.
The Academy has, however, been eager to keep its cash cow, and its ownership has been defended by the Ministry of Culture that carries the responsibility of preserving Swedish historical and cultural values.
In 1995, a new EU regulation demanded that important public announcements be made available electronically to increase transparency and democracy. The modern world was knocking on PoIT’s door, so the Swedish government called in a consultant, Olle Abrahamsson, who suggested a solution for PoIT that excluded private interests. The license would be rented to the majority customer, SCRO, for $1.72 million annually over 10 years. This was an offer the Academy felt comfortable with, and the parliament let go of the print edition.
“It didn’t come as a surprise to us,” says Hans Holm at Edita Sverige. “A demand for change has popped up every five years since the ‘70s. In the end, it’s a matter of money. It is sad for the editors in our newsroom who were sacked. But life must go on … The process of handing over PoIT to SCRO has worked very well, and there are no hard feelings between us.”
But some of Holm’s former colleagues are disappointed: “Apart from the personal loss with being cancelled, none of us wanted PoIT to perish,” says Monica Larsson, a former editor of PoIT, who after 16 years with the publication is now between jobs. “It’s a pity on such an old newspaper and that tradition isn’t preserved.”
The management of SCRO, on the other hand, is happy with the deal. “We have been working for this for more than 20 years,” says Roland Höglund, director general of SCRO. “We wrote history when we brought PoIT into the modern world and made it a Web publication on our site. Now the information is searchable and readable for free for the public.”
To keep up with tradition, part of the deal with the Swedish Academy is that SCRO produce three print copies daily of PoIT that are sent to the three most important Swedish university libraries — Uppsala, Lund and Stockholm.
The license runs until Jan. 1, 2018. Then it will be time to evaluate whether it is worthwhile making the world’s oldest print paper an online-only publication.