News publishers are no strangers to changes in the industry, whether it’s the introduction of the Internet in the ‘90s, the rise of social media in the early 2000s, or the launch of AI just a couple of years ago. 

Lena K Samuelsson, senior advisor for Schibsted, has been around for all of it and put together five best practices when it comes to change management for the recent INMA Newsroom Transformation Town Hall.

1. Change but stay true to who you are

It’s a common caveat whenever newsroom transformation is discussed. Change is good, but news organisations should not be changing who they are fundamentally at their core. A company shouldn’t be changing their core values and business goals even when everything else is changing around them.

“We stand on very firm ground,” Samuelsson said. “We have long stories and we’re not social media. We’ve been around and we’ve been a part of our societies for a long time. So be really proud and tell your story because people don’t know just because they use your app.”

Of all the things a company needs to prioritise, investing in what makes them distinct is a real differentiator.

“When all things are done, what is left is actually the truth and the brand because people don’t subscribe to a newspaper, they subscribe to a brand and when they do, that is built on trust,” Samuelsson said.

2. Build empowered teams

Subscribers engage with different news company products because they trust the brand. They want to be a part of the journalism. For companies to earn that, they must start with their culture within.

“Culture is so strong and this has to start with people feeling empowered,” Samuelsson said. 

Today, news organisations are handling an ecosystem of content through many different channels and all different formats. No one can handle all of this by themselves, so building a team is crucial. 

Samuelsson likes to see the team be as diverse as possible — filled with people of different backgrounds and experiences. The company must then lay down common ground for all departments. Those cross-functional teams must have clarity on strategy, and leaders must talk about that strategy again and again. 

Setting stretchy goals is most effective since newsrooms love to win and the actions taken to achieve those goals must be evaluated daily, she said. Teams should be asking, “How did we do, how many people engaged and converted to subscribers” or whatever the strategy is being measured by. And also very important, companies should celebrate all the victories.

3. Rethink or someone else will

Samuelsson delivered a direct message to news companies: “Stop making newspapers online.”

“We have the same structure, we call things the same,” she said. “We publish some content on specific days because that’s how it used to be in the newspaper. If you really want to change, you have to stop making newspapers online. You have to go from a newspaper online to a true online journalistic experience.”

4. Go young, the rest will follow

Samuelsson also wants to see organisations not shy away from skewing too young with their audiences. Not only is it important for companies to establish their brands with young readers and audiences, but this is also a tool to rethink journalism.

For example, young audiences are attracted to summaries. Schibsted brands started using AI summaries on their Web sites, and readership among younger audiences increased for them.

“They need a better introduction,” Samuelsson said. “We write too hard, straight language, long text. But when we have summaries, people can access the content easier, and we got the readership to go up with younger audiences.”

The younger audiences are not the problem, she said. The news companies are.

Organisations shouldn’t just be thinking about what they are going to talk about, what content they’re going to cover, but also how it needs to be talked about. Who is the audience and how will they want to access the information? 

News companies have to start thinking about the full ecosystem and customer journey. Doing a good job on social media isn’t enough to attract younger audiences. They won’t go to a news site after seeing something on social media. Research shows they’ll just Google what they saw.

This shows how important it is for companies to be on top of search. Audiences get plenty of entertainment off of social media. They don’t need that from a news publisher. They want news, she said.

5. Nobody’s an expert when you don’t know

When new technologies change the industry, it’s important to remember no one is an expert when everyone is learning and trying to figure out how those technologies are changing their worlds.

An example Samuelsson gave was enhancing journalism with AI. Something Schibsted learned from empowering its AI team is this is an area that can help tremendously with user engagement.

During the 2020 U.S. election, Aftonbladet had 9,000 questions from readers across all channels and platforms. The company was able to answer 300 of them. During the 2024 election just last month, they got half a million questions and they answered them all with AI. 

“The chatbot was built from the inside, so we trusted it, and our readers trusted it, and we could really give so much more journalism to our readers,” Samuelsson said.

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