On September 17, INMA awarded 30 young professionals around the world with its debut “30 Under 30” award as part of its Young Professionals Initiative. This is the 21st in a series of 30 features about these impressive rising media stars who are shaping our industry. 

After being accepted by one of Austria’s best journalism programmes, Michael Sommer dropped out of software development studies and ultimately found his calling in data journalism.

In early 2019, he wrote the final thesis about the introduction of an interactive storytelling team at Kleine Zeitung and, by summer, the company was implementing the step-by-step strategy he had outlined in his paper.

One year later, storytelling has become a staple at Kleine Zeitung, the second-largest Austrian daily, and as the year comes to a close, he will take a new role as lead product designer.

He sees digitalisation as “both the threat and possible way out of the crisis” facing the news industry and looks forward to helping keep the industry moving forward.

“I want to be one of those future top executives embracing the power of these threatening technologies, to be on the solution side at the end,” he said.

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