Danish media revolution: New high-quality print and web-media to give news away this autumn

From this autumn on, the Danish news industry will experience a radical change, bringing life to new media and new distribution-channels, potentially altering the concept of “newspaper”, news-website and threatening to wipe out major players from the market.

Triple move
At least this could be the consequence of a spectacular triple move by Politiken – one of the “three big” Danish newspapers. At the same time the Politiken plan both embraces the web, dramatically renew the format of its printed edition and launch a brand new freely distributed newspaper.

Answers “free news” challenge
The potentially revolutionizing manoeuvre is the Politiken answer to the impact of two new-media phenomena facing the Danish news-industry: the Internet and Free newspapers.

Internet makes printed news old news
First: the coming of the internet has speeded up the spreading and consuming of news, first introduced by TV and radio. The readers simply know the news before opening the morning paper. Hence features, columns and editorials – not news as such – is what should be the constituting content of a modern newspaper. At least this is what the Politiken analysis suggests.

Journalists applies for their own jobs
The Politiken respons to this situation has as suggested been radical: last week all journalists were asked to apply for their own jobs in a brand new news-organisation (assuring noone would be layed off). In the new printed edition of Politiken the top third of each page will be dedicated to brief news-updates.

Web first!
The news-articles will – in the new Politiken – be written by news-staffmembers producing content primarily to the Politiken internet-edition. This “web-first” concept promises substantially to improve state of web-news in Denmark. News on print will be the “leftovers” of the web-site – not as hitherto the other way around!

Explosion of free newspapers
The internet has not, however, been the only threat to the established daily newspapers the past few years. The coming of Free Newspapers, distributed at metrostations and on the streets, have challenged the established newspaper-industry as well. This prevalence of free printed news was the second argument behind the new – and not-so-newslike – Politiken format. 

The Dagsbrún challenge
Three month ago the Islandic Dagsbrún detonated a bomb shaking the Danish media landscape. Dagsbrún proclaimed their intentions of delivering a free, high-quality newspaper at the doorsteps of the majority of danish households. Before 7 o’clock in the morning. However the JP/Politiken group, with the new not-so-newslike-designed-to-combat-free-news Politiken-format, have taken an offensive move towards the intruder.

Politiken strikes back
Not only does the new Politiken-format safeguard Politiken from the worst repercussions of the Icelandic initaiative. Since news are no longer cardinal to the print edition, Politiken has put itself in a position where they’re able to take up the fight, striking back. And last week the JP/Politiken group announced that they’d also deliver a high-quality freely distributed morning paper. In effect, Politiken will transform the subscriptionbased newspaper of today into a subscriptionbased newspaper of tomorrow, a cutting edge content website and an ad-supported free newspaper. That might work!

Reshaping the media landscape
Not only Politken has, however, been inclined to act to the Dagsbrún initative. Free weekly newspaper Søndagsavisen has also announced plans to publish a midweek edition to defend it’s position. TV2, the largest commercial Tvstation in Denmark, on the other hand, might enter into a coorperation with Dagsbrún, having Dagsbrún deliver newsupdates after TV2 quitting its subscription to Ritzaus Bureau, the Danish news-agency, earlier this month. Likewise Dagsbrun and the Danish Post today announced their intentions to create a Dagsbrun-dominated distribution-company in order to be able to get the Dagsbrún distribution right.

On the internet it still remains to be seen what consequences the Politiken move have. What will the Politiken service actually look like. What will the reactions of other established news-sites be? And what will be the consequences if and when new forms of usergenerated OhMyNews-like services starts to emerge?

Lots of questions – no solid answers. Only thing sure is: something’s happening! And it’s going to be big.