Journalists as Tastemakers: an analysis of the coverage of the TV series Borgen in a British, Swedish and Danish newsbrand

This article presents a comparative content analysis of the ways in which journalists have engaged with and defined what counts as good taste and cool culture in relation to the internationally successful Danish TV series Borgen
in three national news brands: The Telegraph from United Kingdom, Svenska Dagbladet from Sweden and Berlingske from Denmark. Taking our point of departure in the theoretical concept of the ‘cultural intermediary’, we demonstrate on the one hand that the coverage is anchored in traditional cultural criticism, showing for example how all three newsbrands use reviews and previews to evaluate Borgen as both ‘good taste’ and (more rarely) ‘bad taste’. On the other hand, the analytical findings indicate that tastemaking is a very complex process and that journalistic tastemaking also occurs and is performed outside the cultural pages in articles characterised by hybridisation in which fictional and real narratives are combined.