A contemporary debate in media studies concerns participation and empowerment, and to whatextent digital media shift power to the citizens. This study assesses the long-term viability of participatoryjournalism using Swedish content and user data. Inclusion of comments and blog-linkson news sites increased from 2007 to 2010, and decreased rather dramatically from 2011 onward.Posting user comments or writing blogs have never been activities that have appealed to a majorityof the Swedes. Participatory journalism seems to have decreasing value to producers and little appealto users. A shift in how power is distributed in the public sphere is absent. This is not primarily aproblem of reluctant producers but, more importantly, a lack of interest from users.