When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Bergens Tidende realised it was time to take its breaking news coverage to the next level.

During this week’s Webinar, INMA members heard from Liv Solli Okkenhaug, managing editor, about how the company transformed operations and created a compelling new approach that continues to evolve.

The Schibsted-owned Norwegian newspaper focuses on local and regional news and has been a mainstay since 1868. More recently, it has moved into the digital realm, going beyond digital-first to become mobile-first — since about 80% of its readers consume their news that way.

But, despite the digital format, Okkenhaug said that in 2020, the print newspaper culture was still prevalent in the newsroom.

“The Internet didn’t get the same prestige in the newsroom,” she explained. “During major events, the entire newsroom would get involved. But when it came to smaller events in the daily breaking news … there wasn’t as much interest across the newsroom.”

The pandemic changed that because “suddenly everyone had to work on breaking news. There was nothing else for a few months.”

The disruption unearthed some surprising discoveries, she said: “For one thing, we noticed that many journalists were a bit rusty since they hadn’t been that involved in breaking news. They couldn’t really keep up with the pace and they were unsure of what to do and how to do it.”

It also became apparent that many of the existing workflows were manual and ineffective. They needed systems and tools that could help them work smarter and faster.

Reinventing a newsroom

During the first year of the pandemic, Bergens Tidende implemented a new strategy and reorganised the newsroom:

“One of our goals in this process was to improve our breaking news coverage,” Okkenhaug explained. “We established a strengthened breaking news desk and put almost the entire newsroom on shifts for early mornings, for evenings, and weekends to increase staffing around the clock.”

To bring all journalists up to the same level of competence, Bergens Tidende held mandatory boot camps for everyone in the newsroom. Topics included everything from how to cover different types of breaking news events to how to approach a breaking news scene to safety tips. A separate class taught journalists how to get news out as quickly as possible.

“It wasn’t just reporters who needed a boost in their competence,” Okkenhaug said. “Many newsroom leaders were unsure of how to manage breaking news events.”

To fill that void, a separate training programme for newsroom leaders addressed topics exclusive to their positions so “everyone [was] capable of jumping in and leading breaking news coverage.”  

Next, it worked on building a culture that valued winning news battles, both big and small.

“We set goals for how many push notifications we should be first on each week. We recorded each win on a board that is placed centrally in the newsroom right by the breaking news desk so everyone can see it all the time — one line for each win.”

It did the same thing every time it was quoted by the Norwegian News Agency or beat the local competition to the site of a story. This fostered a greater sense of pride and competition among journalists and created an environment where they showed up for work “ready for anything.”

Building a better bot

To support this new culture, Bergens Tidende knew it needed to provide better systems and routines. Central to that was the creation of its Breaking News Bot, which makes the coverage process faster and more efficient.

Developed by its data journalists, it is designed to simplify and automate the collection of information.

When a breaking news incident is entered into the Slack-based programme, the journalist enters an incident level so “everybody knows how severe an incident is.” It then alerts key personnel, such as the head of photography, head of data journalism, etc.

“This tool has really changed the way we work,” she said, noting it saves a tremendous amount of time and ensures all the information on a breaking news story is gathered in one place instead of “spread among 10 different reporters.”

The feature has been so useful and popular that it is now widely used amongst Schibsted publications and it is being developed further.  

“We also have routines for news monitoring for who gets the first notification out,” Okkenhaug said. “We have checklists for different types of events so that everyone should know at all times what to do when something happens.”

Increased engagement

The newspaper’s efforts have paid off, as engagement data shows a significant increase in daily active subscribers.

“Our readers are extremely interested in breaking news. Focusing on this, we have increased our key metric, which is daily active subscribers, month by month. So it works,” Okkenhaug said.

Just before the pandemic hit, Bergens Tidende had launched a successful traffic studio, providing real-time updates on local traffic and reporting on where traffic is slow or where traffic incidents have occurred. This has become one of its greatest success stories, because, she noted, it’s an important topic that affects numerous people every day.

Over time, it has helped build loyalty among the Bergens Tidende audience.

“When people are stuck in traffic in our area, they really expect to find out why,” she said. And, if the studio is too slow to deliver news on current conditions, “we will get complaints.”

The popularity of the traffic studio has taught the newsroom a vital lesson: “Breaking news is not just about accidents or disasters or political scandals or murders; it can also be about food prices or chaos for travellers.”

During the summer of 2022, when operations stopped at European airports, Bergens Tidende created a dedicated live studio to provide continuous updates on the impact on regional travellers, Okkenhaug said: “Breaking news is often about identifying what our readers care about and producing journalism on those topics.”

Breaking news coverage has become such a core component of the newsroom that now people ask to take an extra shift on the breaking news desk when they need to sharpen their skills or train for speed.

“That is really my best indicator that we have succeeded in changing the culture,” Okkenhaug said. “I’m happy every time we get that question.”

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