Over the years, Schibsted has built a reputation as a Nordic powerhouse in digital transformation. One of the company’s flagship brands, Svenska Dagbladet, is now undergoing a significant transformation under the leadership of Lisa Irenius.
Irenius, who took on the dual role of Editor-in-Chief and CEO at the end of 2023, is leading the Stockholm-based newspaper through an organisational shift that aims to strengthen collaboration between editorial and commercial teams while embracing new storytelling formats.
With a background in culture journalism, she brings a unique perspective to the challenges of digital innovation, subscription growth, and editorial-commercial alignment.
It has been an eventful time for the parent company since Irenius took over at the top of the paper. Last year, Schibsted ASA was split into two companies: Schibsted Media, owned by The Tinius Trust, and Schibsted Marketplaces, a publicly listed marketplaces company (recently renamed Vend). And in February, Schibsted Media announced that it was buying Telia Company’s commercial TV channels, TV4 in Sweden and MTV in Finland.
As for Svenska Dagbladet, the publisher has made great strides in recent years to secure its digital future. It has a strong growth in digital subscribers, +20 percent since the beginning of 2024.
In this conversation, Irenius shares how her previous experience as culture editor helps her in her current position, how her company approaches journalistic innovation, and the thinking behind Svenska Dagbladet’s significant structural changes. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lisa Irenius will be joining WAN-IFRA’s World News Media Congress, taking place in Krakow on 4–6 May 2025, to share leadership lessons on navigating a lasting transformation.
WAN-IFRA: You were Svenska Dagbladet’s culture editor before you took on your current position. How would you characterise that transition?
Lisa Irenius: I must admit, it was something I never imagined I would do. But I was encouraged to go into the process, and I had been culture editor for some time and was ready to do something else.
It might seem like a really big step, but there were two things from the culture section that I think have been very useful in this role. One is that the culture section, at least for me, is like a place for experimentation. There is more room to try new approaches and different formats than in the regular news flow. We did a lot of testing, with AI journalism and involving readers, for example.
The other thing is, we are working more and more with a reader economy, and digital subscriptions are becoming more important for our income. Cultural coverage in a broad sense, addressing many engaging issues of our time, is an opportunity to create journalism that sparks desire and motivates payment.
During my time at the culture section, we learned a great deal together about how to truly engage and attract subscribers. Cultural journalism has evolved from being of interest primarily to niche audiences to reaching a much broader readership, and it is now one of the most effective sections of the newspaper in driving subscriptions. I take the lessons learned from this with me into the work of developing SvD as a whole.
Speaking of digital subscriptions, a lot of publishers struggle to get everybody in the newsroom aligned behind the subscription business, to get everyone to buy into things like data and metrics and how their stories are doing. Since you are both Editor-in-chief and CEO, does that make it easier to get journalists and editors to buy into your model? Can you communicate it better than just a CEO or an editor who is fighting that problem?
I think so. You can more easily get the newsroom to understand the business logic, the need to deliver value to subscribers. For a newsroom, it is also motivating to focus on the value for the readers: they are the reason we do journalism. In this dual role you can also work with the commercial side to help them better understand the newsroom and how they can work together. And it’s much easier to put together groups with both commercial and editorial expertise because you have the mandate to do that.
Actually, at Svenska Dagbladet we’re now doing a very big organisational change. We’re completely changing the editorial organisation and bringing together some of the newsroom and product development. An important part of our organisation is the close collaboration between editorial, tech and commercial teams, working together to create the best possible news experience.
How does that work on an organisational level? How much autonomy do you have from the group-wide organisation around product development for experimentation? Especially considering the fact that Schibsted has developed a considerable part of its tech stack in-house.
That’s a very timely question, and it’s changing a lot right now. Last year, Schibsted Media became a separate company [when Schibsted ASA was split into Schibsted Media and Schibsted Marketplaces, now called Vend]. We are currently in the process of building Schibsted Media, as we work to define our own path forward.
We hadn’t originally planned to reorganise Svenska Dagbladet at the same time as the major restructuring now taking place within Schibsted Media, but the timing happened to coincide. While this means a great deal of change all at once, it also presents an opportunity: it creates the conditions for a fresh start – both at SvD and in our collaboration with the wider Schibsted teams. Looking ahead, we will work much more closely across the different media houses, particularly in the area of product development.
Can you talk about the recent news of Schibsted Media acquiring Telia Company’s commercial TV channels (TV4 in Sweden and MTV in Finland)? What impact do you expect from this?
This is a huge media event. TV4 is as big as Schibsted Media is today, so we’re doubling in size. This also gives Schibsted Media a stronger position in Sweden. To compete with the global tech giants, it’s crucial to have strong media companies with owners who understand and defend independent journalism.
But we’re now waiting for the deal to be approved by regulatory authorities, which will hopefully happen after the summer. We need to wait for that before making any further plans.
With all of this internal change, both at the group level and at Svenska Dagbladet, how do you navigate the challenges of communicating a clear vision and direction of your strategy?
In some ways, it’s actually easier when changes happen at the same time – it makes it even clearer that we’re rebuilding together to create even better conditions going forward.
We already have a strong culture of collaboration within Schibsted Media, and I see a genuine willingness to work more closely and support each other.
But communicating change, a clear vision, and a strategy is always challenging. As a leader, it’s easy to feel like you’re repeating yourself. And being clear and giving definite answers is difficult in an industry that’s constantly evolving. So what I also try to communicate is that we have to find the answers together: we need to experiment more, test things out, and learn from the process.
Schibsted has always had a reputation of staying ahead of the transformation curve. Is that innovative and experimental culture still pervasive?
Yes, I think it is really strong. The agreement with OpenAI, which gives us access to their development environments, is one example of this. [Editor’s note: In February, OpenAI announced a content partnership with Schibsted Media.] The agreement to acquire TV4 in Sweden and MTV in Finland is another expression of the ambition to build a modern media group – one that spans journalism across entertainment, sports, and news, in a wide range of formats: text, audio, and video.
Our strong focus on digital development has benefited from being part of a group that includes both media and digital marketplaces. And now, as we build an independent media company, we’re very keen to preserve that momentum. I’m confident it will remain – it’s a central part of our culture and continues to shape how we work and what we aim to achieve.
What has been your biggest learning since you took over your current position, either about yourself or the organisation?
I had the advantage of knowing SvD well when I took on this role, so I was confident that there are fantastic colleagues here: both ambitious and unpretentious, and always curious about the world and eager to learn new things.
As for the new role, there’s been a steep learning curve in many areas, not least on the commercial side. Learning more about how customers perceive a newspaper has given me interesting perspectives on the editorial work as well: we tend to focus on individual publications, but we can improve in seeing the bigger picture that readers experience.
On a personal level, I’ve also come to appreciate the value of patience and perseverance more and more. As a journalist, you’re used to things happening quickly. But driving change within an organisation is a much more long-term project. In Sweden, there’s a notion that successful leaders should be impatient, but I believe that good leaders need to be very patient.
I’ve also learned to be more accepting of the fact that sometimes you have to make decisions without having all the answers, or knowing exactly how things will turn out. Starting a restructuring process was a bit scary, I’ll admit that, but there are many situations where maintaining the status quo is a bigger problem than making a change.
Can you say more about the upcoming changes at Svenska Dagbladet?
Our newsroom was previously organised into 17 departments. We are now shifting to working in six hubs or areas of collaboration, which reflect key focus areas for SvD. These hubs will consist of smaller, self-organising teams.
We are strengthening fast-paced news journalism within a hub for Breaking News, we are consolidating expertise in economics, politics, and international relations in a hub we call Fokus, and in the Storytelling hub we will focus on developing our in-depth journalism by working more integrally with audio and text.
To invest more in new projects for digital growth, we are creating a hub called Growth, which will bring together editors, reporters, project managers, as well as expertise in UX, data analysis, and product development.
When it comes to the print newspaper, we’re making a both important and symbolic shift in the hub working with it: we are increasingly focusing on the digital edition, which we see as an important premium digital product going forward – many readers value the curated news experience it offers. That said, we also believe that the print newspaper will continue to be important to us for many years to come.
We believe it’s crucial to be able to quickly adapt the newsroom and take on new strategic areas. Even within news and lifestyle journalism, we are creating dedicated focus teams that can concentrate on selected topics and issues.