This is part of the newsroom at Politiken, one of the leading Danish dailies (not the one that ran the cartoons, although they’re owned by the same company). I know it’s not much of a photo–I’m way too self-conscious to be any good as a photographer; I just want to take the shot quickly and unobtrusively and move on before anybody notices. Still, I hope it at least gives a hint of the fact that this is a lot more pleasant and Danishly stylish than the newspaper offices back home. Politiken is also in the midst of building an outdoor deck between the newsroom and the culture section, where people will be able to sit outside and drink their coffee on nice days.
Now there aren’t all that many nice days in Copenhagen, and the Sacramento Bee has a totally sweet outdoor cafe on its roof. But my totally unscientific impression from visits to four Danish workplaces over the past couple of days is that an awful lot more thought and effort is put into making them pleasant than is the custom in the U.S. of A. (or the U.K., or Germany). I guess, with an unemployment rate of 3.2%, a workplace has to be nice or nobody would be willing to work there.