The Nordic countries have much in common, including history

When iNorden was first launched, we hoped for the web site to become a Nordic equivalent of OhmyNews. For a while, the site functioned well - and I dare say it was one of the most interesting citizen journalism projects in the Nordic countries.

But with limited resources and based on volunteer staff, the project eventually more or less disintegrated. Though we never hoped that our web site would become a number one social platform, new solutions like Twitter have definitely made it even more difficult to create a good citizen journalism web site. In any case, most of our contributors were more interested in writing opinion articles than writing classical journalism - interviews and in-depth stories were few and far between. iNorden increasingly turned into nothing more than a group blog, and as many group blogs it did not grow stronger over time; rather, it withered away.

Still, I believe that some of the ideas behind iNorden were good, and when now relaunching the web site as something else entirely, I am trying to keep those ideas integral to the project. Central is the idea that the Nordic countries is more than just a group of countries: we share a lot - culturally, linguistically, historically, politically, etc. Regrettably - however - most Nordic newspapers have a lacking coverage of news and stories from other Nordic countries; and Nordic bloggers mostly pay little attention to things going on in their neighbouring countries. Ironically, U.S. news and politics are often given much more attention, a phenomenon we could - perhaps - describe as Americanism. To complete the irony, I’m writing this in English, but I have an excuse: I hope that the new iNorden will be interesting also to visitors outside Scandinavia, and especially throughout all the Nordic countries, including not only Norway, Denmark and Sweden, but also Finland, the Baltic countries, Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroe Islands.

Another important idea is to create a place for Nordic bloggers to meet and interact, and to discuss media, citizen journalism and blogging. Realising that most bloggers and citizen journalists prefer using their own web sites - building up a readership of their own - the new iNorden will not be a place to publish stories. But it will be a place to discuss current events - a bit like Twitter, a place to share interesting links and a place to read articles on citizen journalism and internet media as phenomenons, articles which will be written by iNorden 3.0s editorial staff. In addition, iNorden will be a place were you can search for specific topics in Nordic blogs, using Google’s custom search function.

I hope this sounds interesting, and that iNorden 3.0. will look (increasingly) interesting. If you want to take part, please register.

Øyvind Strømmen

editor, iNorden

Image: From Wikimedia Commons. Under GNU Free Documentation License.