Germany: popular blog dissects major tabloid

With 300,000 monthly visitors, Bildblog, started in June 2004, has proven very successful at analyzing and dissecting the popular tabloid Bild, according to The New York Times. Christoph Schulteis, one of the four journalists who work on BILDblog in their spare time, says, "We started doing it because in the daily newspaper business we read Bild anyway," Mr. Schultheis said. "We always found small things we can't put in other newspapers because we can't do it every day. So we decided to create a place to collect them." It turns out that many of the blogs readers are employees of Bild and in general, the blog's fact-checking has not worried managers of the daily tabloid. "BILDblog is hardly above the threshold of our attention," said Tobias Fröhlich, a spokesman for Bild's parent company, Axel Springer. "We can't help liking it. It is full of silly assertions, pure nonsense and refreshingly biased stories. Moreover, Bildblog boasts the importance of Bild by calling us the undisputed opinion leader and agenda setter in Germany. What more can one ask for?" On the contrary, sites in other countries, such as Spain's popular news and commentary site, Periodistas Digital, are not as well received by the press they nitpick. The Times' article also mentions that watchdog blogs have become so popular in Europe that at a competition for the best international blog held by the international German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, over 1,000 of the competing blogs surveyed media and technology and awards went to media blogs in seven languages.

Source: The New York Times