In an era when culture itself has become central to political debates, when boundaries between hard news and soft news, facts and opinion are dissolving, cultural journalism contributes to democratic discourse on vital issues of our time. Cultural journalism is furthermore indicative of journalistic autonomy and specialisation within media organisations, and of the intertwined relationship between the cultural and political public spheres. Nordic cultural journalism in the mainstream media covers more subjects today than ever before, from fine arts to gaming, media industries, and lifestyle issues. At the same time, it harbours debates and reflection on freedom of expression, ethnicity and national identity. This book contributes to an emerging international research agenda on cultural journalism at a time when digitalisation, convergence and globalisation are influencing the character of journalism in multiple ways.

“Cultural journalism matters, and it matters differently by location. This nuanced and thoughtful portrayal of cultural journalism in the Nordic countries performs a double elevation of what has been missing for too long from journalism’s discussion: its stylistic and geographic variety. This book offers a strong set of studies that highlight what cultural journalism in the Nordic countries forces us to consider about all journalism everywhere.”

Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Have the changes taking place in the Baltic Sea Region since 1989 altered Cold War frameworks, Orientalist stereotypes, and sporadic news of threats and crises from the East? The studies in this volume demonstrate a startling continuity in the depiction of our eastern Baltic neighbors as fundamentally different from us, as backward or as harbingers of potential threats. The authors demonstrate that journalism is still closely tied to national perspectives of the world, which in turn is related to a broader Western discourse about the Other. Some authors locate identity through journalism's ritualistic dimensions — providing a sense of safety and security as well as warnings of risk and threats - whereas others find it in taken-for-granted strategies of Othering. This is not the whole story, however, for the authors demonstrate that globalization is changing the national context on which journalism is based, thus local news of the Baltic Sea region differs significantly from national news, and EU journalism blurs the boundaries between the national we and its Others. This volume describes, analyzes and compares the manner in which identity is constructed in Swedish, Danish, Finnish and German news about events, people and issues in the eastern Baltic Sea Region at the beginning and the end of the 20th century.