By Emmy Abdul Alim
The digital-only media company has more than 42,000 paying members, representing 1 percent of Denmark’s adult population. Subscription is priced at 139 Danish Krone a month (approximately 18.60 euros).
Founded in 2015 by a small group of legacy media journalists who wanted to “make news less stupid and journalism more beneficial to society,” Zetland now employs around 100 journalists and other employees.
“We decided that a modern news experience is about content plus distribution, and that journalism has to be an experience that is mediated,” CEO Tav Klitgaard told WAN-IFRA’s Asian Media Leaders Summit 2024 in Singapore.
Zetland first experimented with stories that were “longer than articles but shorter than books” and “live” journalism events, before settling on its current daily digital newspaper format that it launched in 2016.
“We do not publish a lot. We publish around four units per day but we do tell our audience that we cover everything that is actually important to know,” Klitgaard said.
Members spend 7 hours a month consuming content
Zetland publishes both in text and audio, which has become a cornerstone of its success, especially with younger audiences.
“About 50 percent of our members are in their 20s and 30s and more than 80 percent of them consume our product via audio,” Klitgaard said.
Members spend an average of seven hours a month consuming Zetland content, with Klitgaard confirming that audio has become the key differentiator for the company.
The CEO believes there are three things that make audio a personal experience for Zetland’s members: convenience (you can listen to it anywhere), storytelling (audio is a rich medium that can use sound effects and music) and personability (it feels “intimate” when you can be in people’s ears).
“We wanted to make that a personal experience and we wanted to add personal engagement because when you’re engaged in the stuff that you consume, you understand it better and that is the goal for us, that people understand what we are telling them and that makes them want to go out in society and act as citizens,” Klitgaard said.
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Zetland’s success challenges the notion that young people are disengaged from news.
“They absolutely want to consume news. They care about the world, they care about society,” he said.
What Zetland has found is that young people have shifted from trusting institutions to trusting individuals.
“We have this movement from institutions to persons, and that’s very important for news orgaisations to understand that you don’t gain trust by being an institution but by being a person, a friend,” Klitgaard added.
Understanding this, the company gives its members different ways to engage with its journalists and staff members. Zetland journalists and other employees, including the CEO himself, regularly speaks to members and customers to ask them how journalists and journalism fit into their everyday life.
“We hear stuff like: ‘Challenge my assumptions,’ ‘I want to get to know the journalists,’ ‘Tell me about solutions,’ ‘Tell me about hope.’ And then we produce our services accordingly,” he said.
Live events, and launching in Finland
The company also holds regular “live” events.
“We do live shows where we bring journalists onto a stage, think a TED Talk meets a cabaret, and it’s kind of just a magical setting,” Klitgaard said.
The engagement approach has driven consistent profitability.
“We are growing revenue quite rapidly, and we expect this year (2024) to have a 40 percent revenue increase across our group,” he said.
The company is aiming for 40 percent revenue growth in 2025 as well, as it officially expands internationally with the launch of a Finnish subsidiary called Uusi Juttu, (which launched on 15 January). Klitgaard said 10,000 people had already prepaid for subscriptions for the Finnish version.
“Next year, we also expect a 40 percent revenue growth and being a subscription service, a lot of that revenue is already secured,” he said.
Klitgaard envisions a broader “Nordic trust model” aimed at countering declining institutional trust.
Beyond news, Zetland diversifies its revenue by developing journalism-as-a-service products like GoodTape.io, a transcription tool with 15,000 paying customers. The company also sells its distribution service to other publishers.
About the author: Emmy Abdul Alim is a news and content professional with more than 15 years of experience as a reporter, journalist, writer and editor. She currently works independently training journalists across Southeast and South Asia, and she also writes and edits for major daily newspapers, corporates, government agencies and non-profit organisations operating both at home (Singapore) and across Asia, the Middle East, and the United Kingdom. She was previously an Editor at Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters.
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