Visiting Berlingske

Danish newspapers never cease to amaze me. In many ways, they are radically different from American newspapers, at least the national ones that I've been studying. I go in with expectations of American similarities and find nonparallels that rather confound me.

Let me back up. I visited Berlingske-Tidende today with my friend Dan, whose host dad happens to be the company's CEO, Peter Lindegaard. We sat in on the morning editors' meeting, with helpful translations from Peter, chatted with him a bit and toured the building, met with the paper's chief political commentator, Thomas Larsen, then had lunch and chatted a bit more with Peter.

Some differences between Berlingske and American newspapers that struck me:

• Printing is all done off-site. Berlingske and JP/Politiken actually share printing facilities outside of Copenhagen to reduce costs. (They are competitors.) Distribution is also not handled within the company.
• The online and print versions of the newspaper are completely different, with different staffs. While part of the reason behind this is because online readers, according to Peter, are looking for quick news and not in-depth news, it's also because the journalists refuse to write for the web, and because they're unionized, they can get away with this. At local newspapers, this is a bit different, because if they refuse, Berlingske can threaten to close the newspaper, but the reporters working for Berlingske-Tidende know their paper won't be shut down, so they won't work in multimedia.
• Their online production is actually costing them money because though advertisers are eager, not enough content is available for the web, so the site is viewed as unimportant
• If a section editor wants more room in the newspaper for content, ads are moved to a different section of the paper. This doesn't happen that often, and the advertisers do get angry, but it happens.
• Journalism is one of the highest-paid professions in Denmark
• Danish journalists covering Parliament have press offices in the Parliament building
  

Other interesting things I learned:

• Berlingske hasn't lost a single subscription since going tabloid a little less than eight months ago
• Their decision to go tabloid was more of an effort to keep current readers than to attract new ones
• Dato's not doing so well, but if it ends up winning the newspaper war, it could be permanent. "There could be room for one free newspaper on the market."
• Peter thinks in 20 years, all newspapers will be free
• Advertisers have absolutely no influence on content, and neither does the management. (Whether this is true or just the opinion of the CEO is debatable, but I'm inclined to believe him.)
• Danish newspaper profit margins run around 5 percent to 10 percent

The more I know, the more I want to become fluent in Danish and move here.