View text source at Wikipedia
Type | Online newspaper |
---|---|
Owner(s) | Dream Catcher Oy |
Editor | Alexis Kouros |
Founded | 2007 |
Ceased publication | 2015 (print) |
Headquarters | Helsinki |
Website | www |
Helsinki Times is the first English-language daily online newspaper in Finland providing domestic and international news for the country's English-speaking readers. A weekly printed edition was issued between 2007 and 2015.
Helsinki Times was established in April 2007 by Iranian-born doctor, writer, journalist and director Alexis Kouros, who settled in Finland in 1990.[1] A paper version was published in tabloid format[2] and was eventually discontinued in February 2015.[3] However, helsinkitimes.fi is updated several times per day with domestic news about Finland in English, resulting in a large archive of Finland-related articles.
Helsinki Times has had partnerships with The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, Inter Press Service, People's Daily, and other prominent international media outlets. Columns and articles from these media were published in Helsinki Times regularly; some of them also advertised their sites and services. Domestically, Helsinki Times partnered with Finland's main newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, where Helsinki Times was the official English-language edition of Helsingin Sanomat. During that partnership, which lasted from 2014 to 2016, in addition to its original columns and articles, some articles from the Finnish paper were translated and published in English on the Helsinki Times website.[4]
Nowadays, Helsinki Times is a free online newspaper published by media company Dream Catcher. Notable guest columnists included Mikhail Gorbachev, Dilma Rousseff, Calestous Juma, Pekka Haavisto, Yuri Fedotov, Cynthia McKinney, Giovanni Buttarelli, Jutta Urpilainen, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, Bill Durodié, Veltto Virtanen, and Maria Guzenina.[5][6]
Apart from Helsinki Times, award-winning documentaries and TV series, and books, Dream Catcher also publishes SixDegrees, an online service featuring articles and columns about lifestyle, culture, society, as well as interviews and weekly guest contributions by immigrants in Finland.[7]
Since 2020, the website has included sections for China News in English and Simplified Chinese, whose articles are provided directly by People's Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, and which have downplayed the Xinjiang internment camps[8] and published Chinese state disinformation about COVID-19.[9] The newspaper defended the arrangement as an attempt to balance allegedly biased Western media reports.[9]
On Feb. 22, People's Daily ran a report highlighting speculation that the U.S. military brought the virus to China, pushing the story globally through inserts in newspapers such as the Helsinki Times in Finland and the New Zealand Herald.