Book People Archive

Re: World's Oldest Newspaper Dumps Print Version

J Flenner wrote:

> The Associated Press reports that Sweden's Post-och Inrikes 
> Tidningar -- the world's oldest newspaper -- has now dumped its 
> print edition and gone digital only.
>
> The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, 


What the article doesn't explain is why the Queen's newspaper is 
still around.  PoIT (Post- och Inrikes Tidningar) is Sweden's 
"official journal", where by law certain government contracts have 
to be announced.  It is owned by the Swedish Academy, founded 141 
years after the newspaper, and serves as one of its sources of 
income.  The print issue was a cost, and the Academy had an 
economic interest in discontinuing it.

Queen Christina was the daughter of king Gustavus Adolphus, who 
fell at Lutzen, Germany, in 1632, in the Thirty Years' War.  She 
later abdicated, converted to the Catholic faith, and moved to 
Rome -- her father having died fighting for the opposite faith. 
During both monarchs, the government administration was operated 
by chancellor Axel Oxenstierna.

Your favorite encyclopedia has a short article with many links to 
other articles, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-_och_Inrikes_Tidningar

There was an attempt to digitize old year runs of PoIT a couple of 
years ago, but this is largely considered a failure.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars@[redacted]
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/