In the next ten years, paper printing of daily newspapers in Norway may be a thing of the past. As a matter of fact, this is the opinion of the owner of “Verdens Gang” or “VG”, which is Norway’s number one newspaper and has been published for a century.
“The average age of our readers is 65. They are not immortal,” says Gard Steiro, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief and director. This newspaper last peaked in 2002 with a circulation of 400,000. However, there has been a rapid decline since then. The newspaper lost 90 percent of its circulation.
It’s not just VG that has announced the end of paper in Norway. The country’s second largest newspaper, “Dangbladet”, also plans to end paper printing in three years.
Magazines will exist for another hundred years
On the other hand, Kristin Skogen Lund, director of Schibsted, the publishing group of “Aftenposten”, another Norwegian newspaper, also believes that the print newspaper has a limited future. “Magazines may live another hundred years, but newspapers are not,” he says.
As a matter of fact, paper is almost an accessory in “Aftenpost”. The number of newspaper employees is about 20. The rest is focused entirely on digital. The subscription of the digital newspaper, on the other hand, has an incredible income of 30 million euros per year.
With this figure, it ranks third in Europe, right behind the “Financial Times” and “Times” and ahead of the British “Guardian”. Not a bad number for one of the least populated countries in Europe.
Subscribers count, not clicks
Espen Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of “Aftenposten”, says that for digital, “the number of pages viewed or clicks is not important at all. All of this is over. It’s only subscribers that matter,” he says.
Digital subscription accounts for 80 percent of Aftenposten’s revenue. Ads, on the other hand, only have a 20% share. However, before the 2008 global financial crisis, the opposite was the case.
The Norwegian journalist, meanwhile, says he is grateful to Spotify and Netflix. “Through them, people learned that paying for digital content is not illegal,” he says.
On the other hand, in Sweden, another Scandinavian country, the transformation is a little less radical in Aftonbladet, the country’s second-largest newspaper. However, the number of employees in the paper publication department of the newspaper is very small. Only 25 of the team of 230 people work in print newspapers. The circulation of the newspaper is 600 thousand; This is seven times lower than it was fifteen years ago.
On the other hand, the number of digital subscribers is 235 thousand. Still, “Aftonbladet” does not intend to completely abandon paper printing. “We will always have a mixed model of subscription, advertising and services,” says Lena Samuelson, the paper’s boss.
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