Recently released SvD’s owner Schibsted his future report, a kind of position paper like the New York Times published this spring.
Already in the fifth line says Rolv Erik Ryssdal, CEO of Schibsted, it is increasingly obvious: Schibsted is no longer a media company. The printing house which Christian Schibsted, schooled in typography during childhood in an orphanage, founded in 1839 call themselves “international online player.” In Schibsted Growth gather growth rockets have everything online but little with the media to do.
The traditional newspaper business, as the years donated media companies and their owners money and sublimity, has not much to offer. Instead, media companies glances away from their now trouble-ridden print roots and seek out all that is “digitally and scalable.”
It is not only happening on the top group. Even further down the corporate hierarchy are pure media company to transform into a kind of digital factotum company.
expert newspaper giant will speculate on start-up companies. The investments are not paid with money from Bonnier News paid for with advertising space in its
newspapers.
A week after Schibsted’s report came out took Bonnier News, the very essence of Bonnier journalistic mission consisting of the Group’s Swedish newspapers, another leap from the core business. Previously, they had bought into the so-called partner companies Insplanet, Fakturino and Hittahem as sites Garantibil, Lånbyte, Betalo and Weatherpal. Now came the news that Bonnier News “starts venture capital firms.”
In practice, Bonnier News invested in the start-up NFT Ventures, as with the grand ambition of finding the future of Klarna will buy minority stakes of one to fifteen million in financial services online.
So far Bonnier News the only investor. Newspaper giant will, through the fund and on your own, speculate on startup companies. The investments are not paid with money from Bonnier News paid for with advertising space in its magazines.
The new köpivern explained by Bonnier CEO Tomas Franzén’s “profound strategic review,” which began when he took office. According to this, Bonnier News missions in the coming years “radically increase the proportion of revenues coming from areas with sustainable growth,” emerges in a press release.
It says something about Bonnier belief journalism in the long run. Bonnier News, the symbol of the group’s admirable ambition to actually be a media company, will be both novelty factory and venture capitalist. The plan seems to be that companies today is partly financed by the newspapers in the future to some extent to finance the papers.
Strategically, it is probably wise thought. The money must come from somewhere in the future. The revenue that is lost in one direction must be compensated otherwise. But it would be naive to think that it can be done without risk to journalism.
The first risk is financial. To stop at Bonnier News, is the risk that the company NFT Ventures invests in are not the future of Klarna company hoped for. “Financial services online” is an attractive niche but no self-evident success. It is a venture capital company nature that, at best, few efforts succeed.
Let’s say that either company still gets a “future Klarna” so great that it justifies both the writings and reviews. How would the newspapers that own the company then react to it?
The problem is equally true Schibsted and other media companies (or “internet players”). SvD Business did last spring, an acclaimed examination of just Klarna. Had it been as obvious to examine whether it was owned by Schibsted?
Most reporters would probably answer yes to the question – the journalistic instinct permits otherwise. Most publishers, to which the editorial power belong to, as well.
However, the issue becomes more complicated when the media become part of powerful organizations of other companies that fall within the scope of what should be examined. Although the new structure does not create real problems – journalists allow themselves rarely defeated – it will certainly create credibility problems.
It is important that the media and emerging companies, in synergy the age, are kept separated. For example, the company Schibsted, Bonnier Growth or Growth Media, Bonnier’s better-known growth companies. But the trend is the opposite: Many media companies are buying commercial companies or parts of them, to integrate in the publishing supply.
The point is to add new services tailored to the media consumer is interested in – mortgages, jobs, pension, weather – and make money from them. Newspaper The directors argue that the same principle applies to “partner companies” that advertisers: that of the watertight bulkhead between editorial and commercial.
But it is obvious to a reporter, it is perhaps not to a reader. Credibility problems are also problems.
The question is also where the new liberal takeover frenzy of the media. Should individual broadcasters invest in gaming sites? Or book publishers in the food? The boundaries of what we find unlikely move.
It’s one thing to make money on the internet, another to make money in journalism. If the new revenue to fund journalism without independence is damaged, it is good. But the risk is that the news business, when they are losing ground in the group, eventually becoming marginalized outposts in the giant Internet company.
It is good and necessary that the media companies are not sitting still without chasing new revenue. But the question is where the hunt leads them, and whose problem they want to solve – the shareholders or journalism?
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