Editor’s note: In an ongoing series, INMA is profiling our most engaged members — our super fans — to give members a chance to learn more about each other. Today we profile Mathieu Halkes, head of product for Schibsted News Media. 

In the last few years, Stockholm, Sweden-based Schibsted News Media has managed to scale its self-built news apps, and that’s something that Mathieu Halkes, head of product, is most proud of. Today, Schibsted serves more than 20 brands and millions of people in Scandinavia every day and receives high user ratings.

“And now we are hungry for more, as we are setting a challenging and innovative new app strategy toward the future,” he said.

Halkes added that Schibsted is “an amazing company” to be able to work for — especially because of its natural drive for innovation and change. 

INMA recently caught up with Halkes to learn more about what he’s learned recently and what he’s looking forward to.

 INMA: What big lesson have you learned over the past couple of years that helped shape your plans for future? 

Halkes: That a good work-life balance, more efficient remote team collaborations across countries and companies, and a significant reduction of business travel would all come together during the pandemic. This definitely has impacted and changed our ways of working in a lasting way that we could not imagine at the start of 2020. 

INMA: If you had your career to do over again, what would you want to know in the beginning?  

Halkes: Here are two aphorisms that I try to follow: That in many cases, process follows progress, and that at all times, structure follows strategy. These might seem like “obvious” wisdoms, but they have been guiding me quite a bit while navigating and leading within both bigger and smaller organisations. Much time can be lost on little-used processes and even more money and (human) capital on reorganisations that are not born out of a clear strategy. 

INMA: What makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning? 

Halkes: The energy of my three young daughters, and the great variety of topics I will encounter during my workday. News media are not only incredibly important for any well-functioning democracy, but it’s also the very dynamic digital products we work with nowadays that require a lot of creativity — and attract smart and fun people to work with! 

INMA: What is the craziest job or project you’ve ever done in media — and what did you learn from it?  

Halkes: It was actually my very first experience when starting to work with media in 2005. I was part of a very small team that launched a newspaper for Millennials in the Netherlands, called nrc.next. We operated under very high pressure and had only a few months from the decision to go and the launching of the complete newspaper, organisation, distribution, and, of course, Web site and marketing campaigns.

I was responsible for the very first Web site and the online campaigns, which taught me invaluable lessons about the power of online targeted advertising and building large-traffic Web sites. We set records in how many subscribers we managed to find purely online but also made (in hindsight) a big mistake to base our first Web site mostly on Flash technology. 

INMA: What do you do to relax?  

Halkes: I run, bike, or ski as many long hours as possible in the beautiful Swedish forests, preferably alone as a nice balance with my very social and busy daily life. 

INMA: If you hadn’t gone into news media, what was your backup plan?  

Halkes: For over 10 years I have been running a blog about Urban Gardening in The Netherlands (tuinenbalkon.nl), which has over 100,000 unique monthly visitors in the spring. I would combine doing more gardening work and building a bigger business out of the Web site and community than I have time for today. 

INMA: What is your favourite thing to read?  

Halkes: I can recommend anyone interested in tech, media, and our future to read Benedict Evans’ excellent weekly newsletter. 

INMA: What do you find the most challenging for the news media industry right now? 

Halkes: To capture the attention of new generations in long-lasting ways.

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