Newspapers have to separate their new digital ventures, such as mobile and web TV, from their more traditional newsrooms in order to thrive in today’s market and stop to the “legacy conservatives” gaining the upper hand.
That’s the main message from Verdens Gang chief executive Torry Pedersen, one of Norway’s largest newspaper groups, speaking at the Digital Media Strategies 2014 conference today.
“If you don’t separate them in their infancy the legacy culture will win and the legacy culture is too conservative. But as things develop you have to integrate again.
“If you didn’t separate online and print in 2000 you made a mistake.”
Pedersen says Verdens Gang had run their web and print newsrooms as separate entities for 11 years before merging them in March 2011. Now they are repeating this model with their mobile department, which has been separate since 2010, and their web TV branch which was separated in January this year.
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