Radio Free Finland is back from Christmas break and I’ve lined up a bunch of great guests for the next five weeks – by that time Finnish election fever should be in full swing and I hope to get representatives from various political parties to come on the show. It should be an exciting first half of 2007 on Radio Free Finland!

And to kick-off the new year we’ll be joined by Paul O’Mahony is editor of the Swedish online newspaper “The Local“, and he’ll be on to discuss Swedish politics, news, and a whole lot more…

The Local was founded two and a half years ago by Paul Rapacioli. With his background in a British recruitment agency Paul had a keen eye for a gap in the market. Seeing that there was nobody providing Sweden’s news in English on a daily basis he quickly started a newsletter that grew into what is now The Local.

Paul was soon joined by James Savage, a journalist from England who had worked for the BBC before arriving in Sweden. James edits The Local and has been around since the very early days.

Paul O’Mahony joined the newspaper in September after replying to an ad The Local had put out looking for a new journalist. His job is to update the site with whatever is making the news in Sweden on a particular day. He works with the editor to pick the stories that are most likely to resonate with the newspaper’s readers.

UPDATE: Big thanks to Paul for a fun interview! We discussed The Local, the recent Swedish elections, upcoming Swedish SDP elections, immigration, unemployment, The Pirate Bay, Big Brother, what Swedes think of Finns, what Finns think of Swedes, Finnish women vs. Swedish women…I’m glad we ended it when we did cause it could have got messy.

But speaking of messy – I had some real technical difficulties this evening. First off, the Skypecast service was down, so no one could participate live. Second, the first ten minutes of the interview got cut off, so we missed where he talks about The Local which is a real shame but I’m gonna try and re-record it with Paul and splice it and pretend like it never happened. So my apologies to Paul and everyone else for that. And finally, I said “2006″ not “2007″. It was a rough night. And here’s the podcast..

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (11.7 MB – 25:06)
Download the show in AAC+ format at 24kbps (4.4 MB – 25:06)