[ad_1]
Is there really good enough press coverage of what is happening in Oslo? No, many believe, including City Councilman Raymond Johansen, who believes that issues of greatest importance to the city’s population are not yet covered in depth enough.
Local news group Amedia believes there is untapped potential in the capital, and today it launches the online newspaper Avisa Oslo. With the help of 35 newly hired editors, they will fill in the gaps with news big and small from Oslo.
From his new editorial offices, Avisa Oslo’s editor-in-chief Magne Storedal claims that Oslo is too poorly covered.
Magne Storedal is the editor-in-chief of Avisa Oslo, which aims to be a tough tabloid newspaper with a focus on event news.
Photo: Oddvin Aune / NRK
– Oslo is a backyard when it comes to news. That’s because this city doesn’t have a major news organization serving it. There are many small newspapers that do a solid job with the resources they have. But this investment is so great that we can serve Oslo with news 24/7, he says.
Open room
Thus, there will be a duel in another city between Amedia and Schibsted, owner of Aftenposten. Amedia has already given Schibsted-owned Polaris Media stiff competition in Trondheim. There, the local online newspaper Nidaros has given Adresseavisen a fight over the local news.
Editor-in-chief Erik Waatland at Medier24 says Aftenposten has left a vacancy in Oslo that Amedia can now stock up on.
– Aftenposten is first and foremost a national newspaper that also serves an audience in the capital. It takes a lot for traffic challenges like the metro to stop to end in Aftenposten. Now you have a local newspaper that will be at people’s eye level and will see young and old alike through editorial eyes. If Aftenposten had done the same, it wouldn’t have been an open room here, but it is, he says.
– There are probably some outside of Oslo who think that the big news organizations write about the queues on ring 3 in Oslo?
“I completely disagree with that. Oslo’s centralism in the news image is, first and foremost, a matter of national politics,” says Waatland.
– The room is not open
Editor-in-chief Trine Eilertsen at Aftenposten announced last week that they will spend NOK 20-25 million to hire more journalists and strengthen their position in Oslo. Because he admits that before they were stronger in Oslo.
– Our position in Oslo was stronger before than it is now. Many years of restructuring, cuts, and downsizing have marked that part of journalism. But we see that it is good to rebuild and that we have very good opportunities to strengthen that position since we are the medium with the strongest position in Oslo, he says.
But he does not agree that they have left an open space for competitors:
– The room is not open, but there is room for much more journalism about Oslo, but we have an advantage, we already have a good position and we will strengthen it, says Eilertsen, and emphasizes that he is very happy that it is more journalism about and for the people who live in Oslo.
I think they will survive
Waatland is confident that Avisa Oslo will move forward.
– Amedia has made a meticulous preliminary project and has discovered that very few subscribe to a newspaper per inhabitant in Oslo, and they see that there is a large readership market in a city that is close to 700,000 inhabitants.
Editor-in-chief Magne Storedal says his goal is to have a five-digit number of subscribers in one year.
– We have said that the most important thing in this phase is that many read us. So we are not ambitious enough to have so many subscribers at first. The good thing about Amedia is that they promised to finance us for a long time, he says.
