Schibsted’s chairman Ole Jacob Sunde thinks he has found the recipe for how Norwegian journalism will survive: For the Norwegian media to join together in an alliance against global competitors.
– If we are to have a vibrant press in Norway in the future, we need to cooperate on a national effort to keep it alive and vibrant. Our common struggle against foreign companies is much tougher than the competition within Norway, Sunde told the newspaper Aftenposten.
Norwegian media used to compete with each other on the advertising revenue from Norwegian companies. But now an ever increasing share of the roughly 20 billion NOK goes to global media giants like Google and Facebook.
The media agency iProspect has estimated that the turnover of Google and Facebook taken together in Norway in 2016 will be 3,8 billion NOK. Sunde’s plan is to reverse the flow of money.
– This requires that we build up a technological infrastructure. In Schibsted hundreds of technologists are working on this, but this requires more than technology. We need to cooperate with other media companies, with the government, with our users and advertisers, says Sunde.
He adds that it is particularly important to get the team of the TV and radio channel NRK to join up. The content and user data of the public broadcasting corporation are of great worth to commercial media and should be available for all of Norwegian media, Sunde says.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
