Politiken

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This article is about the Danish paper Politiken. For the Swedish paper Politiken, see Folkets Dagblad Politiken.


Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Politiken Fonden (88.4%) Ellen Hørups Fond (4.4%) Others (7.3%)
Publisher	JP/Politikens Hus A/S
Editor	Tøger Seidenfaden
Founded	October 1, 1884
Political allegiance	Social liberal
Language	Danish
Price	DKK 15.50 (Monday–Thursday) DKK 19.50 (Friday–Sunday and holidays)^[1]
Headquarters	Copenhagen, Denmark
Circulation	130,000^[2]

Website: politiken.dk

Politiken building on Rådhuspladsen, Copenhagen. Photo by Henrik Reinholdson.

Politiken [pʰoliˈtˢigən] is a Danish daily broadsheet newspaper, published by JP/Politikens Hus.

Politiken comes second among Danish newspapers in terms of circulated copies, 126,380 (first half of 2006).^[3] The daily edition of the newspaper has 450,000 readers, 585,000 on Sundays^[4], also putting it in second place (free dailies excluded). Politiken Weekly is the international edition of Politiken, compiling the most important stories of a week for Danes living abroad.

Politiken relaunched itself on its birthday, October 1, 2006, keeping the broadsheet format but splitting most pages horizontally into "overview" (the upper 20-25 percent of a broadsheet page) and "depth" (rest of the page). The depth part provides more analytical, investigative and feature-like articles that tend to be longer and more carefully presented than traditional newspaper articles. The overview part is produced by the papers online desk and summarizes events of the latest 24 hours. The idea is to present a more distinctive and sharper selection of stories without losing the broad coverage of a traditional paper.

Internationally, Politiken is mostly renowned for its photography. Jan Grarup, winner of several World Press Photo Awards and numerous other prizes, is a staff photographer, and several other photographers of the paper have won international acclaim in the last ten years.

1 History
2 Readership and views
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

Dagbladet Politiken (The Daily Politiken) was founded October 1, 1884 in Copenhagen by Viggo Hørup, Edvard Brandes and Hermann Bing^[5]. It had an original daily circulation of 2,000 copies. The paper established its present location in central Copenhagen at Rådhuspladsen (City Hall Square) in 1912.

On 28 April 1940, three weeks after the German invasion of Denmark, Politiken ran an editorial in which Winston Churchill was called ‘a dangerous man’. The editorial was written by foreign affairs editor Einard Schou after a conversation in the editor-in-chief's office with chairman of the board and soon-to-be-again Danish foreign minister Erik Scavenius. The aim is thought to have been to please the German occupational force, though no other Danish newspaper took such steps at the time - usually it was enough to keep within the newly-introduced censorship. As an immediate result, thousands of readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest.

[edit] Readership and views

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Traditionally Politiken was read by the intellectual middle class of Copenhagen, but has in recent years broadened its profile somewhat.

The newspaper was formerly affiliated with the political party Det Radikale Venstre (Social Liberal Party), but has long shed its traditional ties to any specific political party. Since the current liberal-conservative coalition took office in 2001, Politiken has acted as an outspoken critic. Among internationally known issues which the newspaper has opposed are:

Denmark's involvement in the US-led coalition in Iraq
The governing coalition basing its existence on support from the Danish People's Party
The government's major restrictions on immigration
The printing of the Muhammed cartoons and prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen's refusal to apologize to offended Muslims

Interestingly, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten that published the cartoons and Politiken who opposes them are jointly owned by the media house JP/Politikens Hus, but editorial policies are completely separate.

Politiken, and especially its editor-in-chief Tøger Seidenfaden ,a member of The Trilateral Commission [1] and Bilderberg-atendee since 1995, are determined supporters of a closer European Union. The newspaper mostly writes favourably about globalisation, while showing concern about environmental problems and global poverty issues.