Birkir Jon Jonsson, the Progressive Party deputy chairman, says the newspaper cartoon crossed all reasonable boundaries. The deputy chairman continued, saying that the unkind portrayal of Siv Fridleifsdottir was also undeserved.

The cartoonist has apologised; but Jonsson is also calling on Morgunbladid to do the same. Otherwise, he says, a new line has been drawn on the acceptable media treatment of politics.

Morgunbladid editor, David Oddsson, would not comment on the matter when RUV contacted him and Progressive Party chairman Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was out-of-contact.

Siv Fridleifsdottir last week suggested that the Progressive Party might like to consider joining the Left Greens and Social Democrats in government to strengthen their mandate.

The building on the outskirts of Reykjavik houses editorial staff, production staff, the advertising department and the offices of Morgunbladid and is 4,000 square metres in size, RUV reports. The advertisement states that the premises could be available to be moved into at short notice.

Morgunbladid moved to its new home in summer 2006 and does not own the building, but rents it from a property company called Klasa. The newspaper does, however, own the adjacent building which houses its printing presses.

When asked why Morgunbladid is considering moving out of its home, publisher Oskar Magnusson said that the building is simply too big; but would not comment further.

Halldor Eyjolfsson from Klasa said that a part of the building is not being well enough used and Morgunbladid wants to fill it up. However, he also said that if a potential client wants to take over the whole building, that is also an available option.

Before moving to Hadeigsmoa, Morgunbladid was based at Kringlan, also the site of a large shopping centre. Before that, it was based on Adalstraeti in the city centre. It is not known where the paper would move to if it leaves its current home; but the top floor of the print works owned by Morgunbladid is available and used to host the (now defunct) Bladid newspaper offices.

“As happens sometimes, Bjarni was not satisfied with the interview, so it was not published. He was dissatisfied the line of questioning I was energetically pursuing,” the journalist Kolbrun Bergthorsdottir explained.

She said it is quite unusual for the subject of such an interview not to want it published; but it is not unheard of. “We went over the issue in a friendly manner and neither of us was angry and this was the final outcome. These things happen and there is no grudge on my side,” Bergthorsdottir said.

DV claims the figures come from a survey carried out by the research centre at Bifrost University on behalf of the media advertising and planning agency AM Media. According to DV, the number of Morgunbladid subscribers has fallen from 40,000 to 30,000.

Morgunbladid publisher Oskar Magnusson hit back hard, saying that the number of ex-subscribers is nothing like as high as DV make out. “This news is nowhere near the truth – and that is pretty much universal for DV’s coverage of Morgunbladid,” he said.

Bifrost University sources confirmed that the survey was carried out exactly as DV reported; but that the data collected is the property of AM Media. Bifrost’s Njordur Sigurdsson stated with apparent certainty that wherever DV sourced its figures, it was not from Bifrost University.

AM Media meanwhile says it does not intend to make the results public, at least for the time being. The media uptake data is collected for AM Media as a tool for deciding advertising costs.

Chair of the Board Asta Ragnheidur Johannesdottir told Visir.is the decision is based on parliamentary cost cutting and has nothing to do with former Prime Minister David Oddsson being appointed Morgunbladid editor yesterday. It will still be possible for MPs to browse Morgunbladid in the parliamentary building itself; just not at their own offices.

“This is one of the things we are doing to save money. Morgunbladid is a newspaper we have been paying for, but in our opinion, that time has now passed. MPs can easily access news on the internet – even on their mobile phones – and therefore have all the information they need at their fingertips,” Johannesdottir said. There are 63 MPs in the Althingi parliament, but Johannesdottir was unable to confirm how many Morgunbladid subscriptions parliament pays for.

“We will continue to buy the newspapers which are available in parliament: Morgunbladid and DV.” She stressed that the decision to stop the subscriptions was taken before the news of Oddsson’s appointment came out.

The news was revealed to Morgunbladid staff by publisher Oskar Magnusson at a meeting earlier today. Staff also learned today that the Sunday edition is to start being distributed along with Saturday’s paper.

Magnusson said in an interview with RUV afterwards that his staff took the news of their new editor well. He said he feels it is not dangerous to have such a controversial figure in the editor’s chair and does not see a widespread fall in the paper’s readership. David Oddsson has always been able to gain widespread attention with relative ease.

As a young man, Oddsson spent a short spell as a political commentator for Morgunbladid before beginning his long political career in earnest. Oddsson was forced out of the Central Bank by the new government early this year; but never intimated any intention to retire from public life.

Morgunbladid will continue to take a position on important issues, RUV reports. It is expected that Oddsson and Johannesson will begin their new jobs tomorrow. The power of editor will be equally divided between the two.

Discussions about a given trademark can soon begin to have an affect on overall brand image. There are already examples from around the world of companies discreetly employing people to spread negative news about competitors online, for example on popular blog servers. An increase in negative, unfair or unconfirmed news on the internet can have a real and serious impact on a company’s value, mbl.is reports.

This is just one of the issues that will be tackled at the Reykjavik Internet Marketing Conference (RIMC), which will be held later this month.

Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Director of Internet Marketing and one of the founders of Nordic eMarketing, will be one of the conference chairs. The conference is a joint project between Nordic eMarketing and mbl.is. Nordic eMarketing works to advise companies and individuals on how to investigate their online reputations, both that of their staff and of their trademarks and products. By also tracking competitors’ online reputations, companies can begin to build a strategy for using online reputation to their advantage.

Kristjan Mar Hauksson says companies can no longer afford to stand to one side and allow the internet to say whatever it likes about them. To illustrate this, he points out that not long ago United Airlines lost millions of dollars just because of old news. “What happened was that an old and out-of-date news piece about a United Airlines bankruptcy announcement was re-posted on Google News and picked up by automatic search programs which search that particular automatic search engine in order to advise traders whether to buy or sell shares – so they all started selling. In just a few hours the share price plummeted and the company’s losses were enormous,” he says.

That an automatic search program could cause that much damage by picking up a piece of news that was in reality several years old, is just one example of how huge an impact online reputation management can have, according to Kristjan Mar Hauksson.

“They showed great interest,” said Stefan Hermansson, CEO of Austurhafnar-TR, a company heavily involved in the concert and conference centre project.

Hermansson and many other Frettabladid sources confirmed to the paper that a lot of foreign investors have held meetings with representatives of Icelandic banks and other businesses about the possibility of becoming major shareholders. Investors are seeing opportunities to make cheap acquisitions in Iceland due to the collapse of the banks last October.

Nothing has yet been confirmed about the Arvakur deal; but it is known that no formal offer has yet been made regarding the concert hall. The businessmen are understood to be interested in committing to investing in the companies for five to ten years at the least.

The debts of Arvakur are in the region of ISK 4.2 billion (USD 34,305,000) – but Frettabladid sources believe that Glitnir Bank may be ready to write off portions of the debt to encourage more investment in Arvakur.

Thor Sigfusson, chairman of Arvakur told Frettabladid that the process will go ahead in the open, not behind closed doors.

The paper is now looking at ways to return to profit, and according to DV sources, is considering reducing the number of publishing days per week. A reduction in publishing days would likely result in job losses – if only in the advertising sales department. The advertising market has shrunk by up to a third in the last year.

Arvakur, publishers of Iceland’s biggest pay-per-copy paper, Morgunbladid are also working on ways to return to profitability. Wholesale merger of the two companies is no longer on the table, but closer co-operation seems likely.

Printing Frettabladid at the Arvakur print works and merging both papers’ home delivery networks are two options under consideration, but not yet green lighted by the Competition Authority.

The record for the highest temperature at Thingvellir (Parliament Fields) has been broken today, the old record stood at 29.0 degrees Celsius but today it reached a whopping 29.3 degrees according to official measurements from the Icelandic Meteorological Office.

The weather forecast for the next 24 hours indicates that the high temperatures may continue.