This weekend is the annual Excavation Seminar and this year the turn has come to Luleå.

The digging seminar, or just dig as we say in the industry, has been arranged since 1989 and attracts every year from 500 to 700 people.

All with the common denominator that they want to further their education and learn from each other.

Every year, a new city is hosted and during the two days that the seminar takes place, about fifty different lectures, workshops and panels are organized.

It all ends with Sweden's finest journalist award, the Gold Spade, being awarded in a number of different categories.

Freedom of speech must be nurtured

Sweden has the world's oldest freedom of expression legislation.

It's something to be proud of.

But also something to cherish.

For the question is what would we really have known if we had not had a free and independent journalism?

Would we have known what Piteå-tidningen revealed a year ago?

That Älvsbyn's municipality bought consultants via unauthorized direct procurements and that one of the companies used was the mayor's cohabitant's company where the mayor himself sat on the board.

Or would we have known how the boathouses in Kängsö harbor outside Luleå, over the years, have been transformed into regular summer houses.

Despite the fact that this is contrary to both the Environmental Code and the Planning and Building Act, as Norr Media reported at the beginning of last year.

The investigation of the Mikael case

Or how Mikael in Gällivare, despite being granted support by the social services, could lie dead for several days without anyone reacting.

And how the social services in Gällivare deliberately manipulated his journal in order to try to avoid criticism and protect their own activities, as SVT Nyheter Norrbotten revealed last year.

Probably none of this would have been known to the public if it were not for the journalists who dig and scrutinize every day.

And they do it because it's important.

In order for you to be able to demand responsibility from politicians and other people in power.

For tax money to be used where it is needed and for those who do not have a clear voice to be heard as well.

That is why 400 journalists are gathering in Luleå this weekend.

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