During last week week’s INMA Media Innovation Week in Helsinki, attendees got a quick dive into four topics key to the news industry via seven, seven-minute presentations. 

Here are seven case studies in newsroom transformation presented at the conference: 

Iltalehti scores with short videos

Jenni Smith, social media manager at the Helsinki-based tabloid newspaper Iltalehti, said the company has introduced a new platform for vertical storytelling. Called IL-Palat, the award-winning platform consists of short videos and has become one of the newspaper’s most popular features.  

Before making short videos, Smith advised getting to know the format. She also emphasised the importance of planning well and writing a short script. IL uses AI tools for its scripts after summarising the main news points for the script. Since the first second is the most critical to the video, the most interesting sentence must be the one starting the video.  

It is also important to think beforehand about which emotions the video should convey to the viewer, as well as its visual appeal.  

Finally, Smith encourages being brave: open-minded experimentation is as important as planning, she said, and by experimenting you can find out what your audience wants to see. 

5 keys to NTM shift’s from print to digital

In Sweden, NTM, which operates 17 newsrooms across the country, faced the challenge of transforming its traditional newsrooms into digital-only operations. Despite having all the strategies and tools in place, the shift didn't happen. 

As Nils Olauson, editorial director of NTM, explained: “We saw an increase in digital subscriptions, and we had the strategies, but our newsrooms weren’t digitally focused. We were stuck in print.”

NTM developed a plan to address this, identifying the necessary actions to shift their focus from print to digital. They quickly realised they needed to change the internal culture and act immediately. Two years later, five of their 17 newsrooms are fully digital, and they met their goals for digital subscriptions. 

But how did they make it happen?

Olauson identified five critical elements for their digital transformation:

1. Brutal honesty: NTM made sure all editorial staff understood the trajectory of print. “We realised we had to go digital much earlier than we had previously admitted,” Olauson shared. They communicated the reality across newsrooms: “Print will not have a revival, and protecting it won’t change the future.”
2. Get rid of excuses: “Print was the problem,” Olauson said. NTM made the decisive move to remove print production from the newsrooms. They retained only 19 print editors while the remaining 200+ journalists shifted towards digital. The leadership eased the transition by making it clear editors-in-chief would only be evaluated on their success in raising digital readership, freeing them from worrying about the impact on print. This allowed journalists to fully focus on digital content and innovation.
3. Strategic focus: NTM’s digital strategy was built on three pillars: fewer but higher-quality stories, a focus on prioritised topics, and targeting a specific audience: people aged 30 to 50. This focus helped the newsrooms streamline their efforts and produce content that resonated with their digital readers.
4. Invest in competence: NTM invested heavily in training and support. They even introduced a “friendly SWAT team” that visited local newsrooms to encourage and guide staff on their digital journey. The goal was to ensure readers continued receiving quality journalism throughout the transition.
5. Leadership leads by example: “Leaders must walk the walk,” Olauson emphasised, stressing that leaders within the company must make tough decisions and not cling to the past. “If we, the leaders, are uncertain, how can we expect our staff to be sure?” This clarity and commitment from the top were crucial in making the digital transformation successful. 

JP/Politiken shares its storytelling success 

“Show, don’t tell.” That was the advice from Johannes Skov Andersen, head of editorial innovation at the Danish daily newspaper JP/Politiken. Andersen, demonstrated how a digital storytelling format changed the newsroom. 

JP/Politiken has a 140-year history of being an ambitious visual storyteller, and in 2017 it established “super articles” that are behind a paywall. People love the stories, and they perform well on the Web site — in clicks, reading time, and by how many are getting to the bottom of news. 

The storytelling team consists of journalists, graphic designer, video journalist, data journalist, and motion graphic designer. The team starts by gathering in one room with a whiteboard to start planning.

It is important that “super articles” balance text and photos: “If we have too many photos, people will get tired of them, if we have too much text, people will get tired of it too,” Andersen said.

OVB Media brings two divided newsrooms together

Local publisher OVB Media in Germany faced a significant challenge due to its divided newsrooms. Managing Director Florian Schiller shared the difficulties the company encountered as it transitioned towards a paid subscription model.

Their journey began with the observation that other media outlets were moving toward subscriptions. “We didn’t want to be left behind,” Schiller said. In 2020, OVB set an ambitious goal of reaching 20,000 subscriptions by 2023. However, the road to success was far from smooth.

The company’s two-brand strategy created immediate complications. OVB Media operated 24portals, which was a free digital outlet supported by ads and then OVB Online, a paid subscription service. The free portals accounted for a staggering 90% of their total reach, making it difficult to shift focus towards the subscription model. 

The second major issue was the division between the two newsrooms. “There were two newsrooms fighting more against each other than for each other,” Schiller admits.

To address these challenges, OVB tried aligning both newsrooms toward a common goal and unifying them through a connected managerial structure to create a single reporting line.

But things didn’t improve immediately.

“That’s when the real infighting began," Schiller said. Over the first year, tensions escalated, and despite efforts from management, the two teams continued to clash. “We needed a break,” he said. After a year of conflict, the company decided to take a step back. They organised an offsite retreat to analyse the root causes of the internal issues. A task force, composed of employees from both newsrooms, was established to regularly review past problems and propose new procedures moving forward, focusing on areas of improvement to ensure future success.

“The mood brightened, the sun started shining,” Schiller said. After this reset, things began to turn around for OVB. The internal conflict subsided, and the two newsrooms started to work as one cohesive team.

By 2023, OVB Media had not only reached its goal of 20,000 digital subscribers but also strengthened its operations along the way. Schiller identified three key factors that helped them overcome their challenges and achieve success:

1. Alignment: The entire company had to operate under a unified strategy with clear, shared goals that everyone worked towards together. 

2. Organisation: The task force played a crucial role in uniting the newsrooms and establishing a structured reporting line, ensuring transparency and collaboration across teams. 

3. Communication: “Communication has to be relentless,” Schiller emphasized. Keeping everyone on the same page and reinforcing the company’s shared objectives allowed OVB Media to overcome hardships and achieve its goals.

Funke Media uses 2 guiding principles to navigate digital transformation 

In Germany, Funke’s regional media division has successfully navigated its digital transformation in a sustainable and smooth manner. Funke’s Farhad Khalil-Gossow, digital growth/transformation advisor, and Richard Mertens, deputy head of transformation, shared the key principles that have guided them towards their digital goals.

Funke operates across three major sectors: Funke Digital, Funke Regional Media Group, and Magazines. The regional media group alone employs over 1,000 journalists, and getting everyone aligned with the digital transition required considerable effort.

Two guiding principles have driven this process: a sharp focus on leveraging digital tools to sustain journalism and a commitment to high-quality journalism. Gossow and Mertens said they believe journalism is more crucial than ever for maintaining an open and informed society.

Their ultimate goal is achieving digital sustainability by 2030, which serves as the guiding star for all their efforts. At Funke, they advocate for a bottom-up transformation, believing the desire to change must come from the newsrooms themselves. To facilitate this, the leadership team has implemented a coaching system to guide and support teams in their digital transition. These coaches work closely with newsrooms to improve content production and have developed playbooks that bridge the gap between data and editorial teams, ensuring information flows smoothly across the entire organisation.

It takes time, they acknowledge, but these steps were essential to ensure a smooth transition. The coaches were deeply integrated into the teams, providing daily guidance and feedback to foster clear and accessible communication throughout the process.

Communication is key. Gossow and Mertens introduced innovative ways to keep employees engaged. They launched a weekly newsletter for all staff, recognising not everyone has the time to read it thoroughly. 

Journalists are always busy, they noted, so they also created a bi-weekly podcast that employees can listen to during their commutes. These newsletters and podcast episodes allow staff to stay informed about what’s happening in other newsrooms and learn from each other’s experiences.

NWZ’s cross-functional team reaches newsletter goals

In 2002, Germany’s NWZ started a small incubator journey, asking three questions:

• How can we create working cross-functional teams?

• How can we work with audience/editorial/marketing teams?

• How can we increase digital growth and new reach?

Those questions led to this answer: newsletters.

Max Holscher, digital editor, and Fabian Rosekeit, head of CRM and growth, explained that within six months of the newsletter launch, NWZ acquired 10,000 subscriptions within a region of 500,000.

“Until then, we hadn’t really focused on newsletters,” Holscher said. “We had two newsletters with 5,000 subscribers. Now, we have more than 20 newsletters and 100,000 subscribers.”

Most of the newsletters are automated and hyperlocal, focusing on niche audiences around topics of the economy, family, food.

“Newsletter subscribers read three times more articles han non-newsletter subscribers and stay three times more likely to keep their subscription than non-newsletter subscribers,” Rosekeit said. “We mix teams from editorial, sales, marketing, and tech for any newsletter, and they all had to work together to reach newsletter goals.”

Newsletters are a “great tool for stickiness and engagement,” Holscher said. “For print readers, it’s a good first step to digital. Newsletters really helped NWZ to start its digital transformation, and you might all know that just creating a digital product can help any company accelerate digital transformation, whether that’s a podcast, social channel, or good old newsletter.”

Aftenposten redefines content creation, personalisation

Aftenposten’s goal is to have 200,000 digital subscriptions by the end of 2025. Trine Eilertsen, publisher at the Norway media company, explained how.

Aftenposten made easy progress with subscriptions when it put up a paywall. The Norway company benefited from the high propensity to pay from the Nordic population.

“Growth now is harder, so we have to work in a much more focused way,” she said. “Who are we serving? Product had one target group, newsroom had another, subscriptions had another. So we had to agree on who are we actually working for? Who are we there for? This laid the groundwork for our strategy.”

The target group decided upon was 30- to 55-year-olds with a higher education, living throughout Norway, with a declared willingness to pay for news. They were “curious, knowledgeable, critical, interested in hard news content,” Eilertsen said. 

But within the target group, there were differences, two being age and gender. 

“Older users had a higher willingness to pay, and there were clear gender differences,” Eilertsen said. “Females were more interested in the people behind the big stories, and males were more interested in the big picture and international news. Younger audiences demand different formats like audio, video, curated news.”

So the team took all of its 2023 content and mapped it to see how they were reaching the needs of these groups.

“We found we were over-delivering for older male audience and under-delivering for younger audience,” she said. 

They broke these audience segments up into four, focusing on needs instead of age: the analyst, the surfer, the empathic, the sporadic.

Personalisation has helped get the right content to the right readers with the personalised front page outperforming the non-personalised baseline by more than 8%. And engagement of female users in their 30s increased 13%.

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