Nyhedsavisen was a Danish free daily newspaper based on a new concept of distributing a free newspaper to 500,000 Danish homes that became the most read in the country within 18 month of launch. It was owned by investment and advisory catalyst LundXY.
| Type | Free daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Compact |
| Owner(s) | LundXY |
| Founded | October 2006 |
| Language | Danish |
| Ceased publication | August 2008 |
| Headquarters | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Website | avisen.dk |
History and profile edit
Nyhedsavisen was first published on 6 October 2006.[1] In its first year the paper had a circulation of 160,000 copies.[2] In March 2007 its circulation was 400,000 copies.[2]
At its inception, the paper was owned by the Icelandic[3] Baugur Group, with minority stakes held by a number of co-founders, including Morten Lund. However, in January 2008, Baugur decided to sell Lund a 51% majority share of Dagsbrun Media, the holding company for the newspaper. For the acquisition, Lund had teamed up with Morten Wagner of Freeway, an owner of popular social networking sites such as dating.dk and arto.dk. It is believed that they bought the stake for a single Danish crown. At that stage, the newspaper had lost close to $50 million. Rumour has it that Morten Lund assumed this debt.
Detractors pointed out that Nyhedsavisen suffered with funding issues from the outset; at launch, analysts were concerned that Baugur's £45m investment was too small to keep it afloat. It was also reported in the Danish press that the newspaper lost 200m Danish crowns over the course of 2007, before Lund's takeover. However, under new ownership it officially claimed the position of most widely read newspaper in Denmark, with a daily circulation of 551,000 copies[4] and A-Pressen have taken over the news paper's on-line edition.[5]
The paper was closed in August 2008[3] with a reported deficit of approximately $100 million, generated mostly under the previous ownership, making it the latest victim of the so-called "newspaper wars" in Denmark.[3]
Editorial edit
The editorial management presented Nyhedsavisen as a new journalistic concept because of its special mix of news stories. The mix was meant to make the news paper a contrast to the established newspapers.
According to the editorial management at Nyhedsavisen the old news papers were too reactionary, because they published too many stories based on the political system. Nyhedsavisen categorized these stories as the World of power.
The idea was to downgrade these type of stories. Instead the news paper should contain much more stores from what Nyhedsavisen named The unknown World and Our world. These two categories respectively contained stories about for instance new science and family life.
The competing newspapers that Nyhedsavisen criticized has denied that Nyhedsavisen contributed with a new type of newspaper.
See also edit
References edit
- ^ Berlingske Tidende (2006). "Nyhedsavisen sætter dato på" (in Danish).[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b Piet Bakker (2007). "Free daily journalism – anything new?". Journalistika. 4. Retrieved 26 November 2014.
- ^ a b c Henrik Søndergaard; Rasmus Helles (October 2010). "Media policies and regulatory practices in a selected set of European countries, the EU and the Council of Europe: The case of Denmark" (PDF). MEDIADEM. Archived from the original (Background information report) on 13 December 2014. Retrieved 12 December 2014.
- ^ Freewat aps
- ^ "Fortinet". Archived from the original on 2014-12-19. Retrieved 2009-12-05.
External links edit
- Official website (in Danish)