Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.03.2007, Blaðsíða 4

0_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 03_007_INTERVIEW/MEDIA
Journalist Sigríður Dögg Auðunsdóttir has
started a new weekly news magazine. Be-
ing a woman, she has had to work hard to
keep the competition from labelling it as a
‘women’s mag’.
Sigríður Dögg Auðunsdóttir has a stel-
lar reputation as a journalist. In 2006, she
was awarded for investigative journalism
by the Icelandic Journalists Association for
her series of articles on the privatisation of
formerly publicly owned Icelandic banks,
Búnaðarbanki (now Kaupþing) and Lands-
banki Íslands) which revealed suspicious
dealings between government officials and
private investors. She also caused quite a stir
when she uncovered suspicious e-mail cor-
respondence between several higher-ups in
Icelandic society regarding the Baugur-case,
the largest court trial in Iceland to date.
Her most recent foray in journalism was
to found – along with her husband Valdimar
Birgisson, former sales manager for 365 Me-
dia – and edit a new weekly news magazine
in Iceland, named Krónikan. The idea was to
put together a magazine that would focus
on news related content and put it in con-
text, filling readers in on not only what was
on the news but also what it means.
Several experienced and well-regarded
journalists accepted her offer to join the
magazine, leaving hard-earned positions to
try their hand at something new and fresh
in the Icelandic media market. There was
much anticipation regarding the publication.
Last month, the magazine hit the streets to
mixed reviews. Sigríður Dögg sat down with
a Grapevine journalist to talk about her new
magazine, and the challenges of being a fe-
male editor for a news magazine.
Tell me a little bit about how this maga-
zine started.
My husband and I had always wanted to
work together on our own business. We
started to think about what we wanted to
do in the future, and we asked ourselves: if
there were no obstacles in our path, what
would we want to do? We wanted to do
something that was our own, to produce a
magazine that we could be proud of being
associated with, a magazine that we would
want to read ourselves.
We began to think about this in Sep-
tember/October and started to work on it in
December. We were lucky to get our art di-
rector, Bergdís Sigurðardóttir, on board very
early. She has been in the business of design-
ing magazines for 12 years, and our ideas
on how the magazine should look came
together well, so she deserves at least half
the credit for the magazine. I think together
we managed to make the kind of magazine
we wanted to make: a quality product that is
both entertaining and full of material with a
minimalist and approachable design.
But my emphasis can be seen very clearly
in this magazine. When you start a project
like this, you have to rely on your own in-
stincts, and not be too worried about what
others are going to think. We decided from
the start to follow our convictions, and I think
that the readers will see that this is done with
integrity and ambition.
This magazine had built up some hype
by word of mouth before its actual pub-
lication, and when it hit the streets, it
looked very different from what I had
imagined. I had imagined a very hard-
hitting news magazine.
It was never our intention to start a maga-
zine that would only feature news related
material. The Icelandic market is simply too
small for that. But we did try to maintain that
perception on purpose, for business reasons.
Two new newspapers were being established
at around the same time, and we were sim-
ply afraid that they would try to follow our
lead if they knew what we were up to. This
is a cutthroat business and the competition
is hard, so we did our best to keep the con-
cept behind the paper as a business secret.
Instead, perhaps we managed to surprise a
few people.
But there was something else as well.
When we were starting off, with me as the
Editor, Arna Schram as the Assisitant Editor,
and another woman on the editorial staff,
while there was only one man, right from the
beginning we started to hear middle aged
men in the media business describing us as a
women’s magazine. So this was our way to
put a stop to that.
This was never intended to be a women’s
magazine, it is a weekly magazine for both
men and women, and it would have been
very damaging for us if it had been labelled
as a women’s magazine from the start, so
we decided to emphasise the news aspect
and we managed to put a stop to that dis-
cussion.
It just seems as if there are a few indi-
viduals in this business, of a certain age and
gender, who seem to be more eager to talk
negatively about our paper. I cannot state for
sure that it is because there are women at
the helm, but it certainly looks like it to us.
I mentioned how a lot of hype had built
up around the magazine before it was
published, what do think contributed to
that?
I think… no, I am certain that a part of the
reason was because there are women re-
sponsible for the magazine. This has never
happened before in Icelandic media, with
the exception of Herdís Þorgeirsdóttir, who
founded the magazine Heimsmynd. But since
then, women have not been very prominent
in executive positions in Icelandic media, es-
pecially among owners and founding part-
ners.
Also, this was such an experienced group
of women who left other papers to try to es-
tablish something new, which is a statement
in itself. We feel that there are certain things
that could be done better and we intend to
do things the way we want them done. The
attention I received personally in relation to
the series of articles I have written about the
privatization of the banks, and the whole e-
mails issue (see intro). After that, I went on
maternity leave, and founding this magazine
was almost the first thing I did after return-
ing. I think people were maybe expecting me
to continue to uncover issues like that.
Was it easy, getting this experienced
group together? Some people left good
positions to follow you to found a new
paper.
It was no problem. I think almost everyone
I asked came onboard, with maybe one ex-
ception. I think that primarily shows what a
good concept this is. All these people, with
all this experience, believed this would work.
People have pointed out that the magazine is
a little on the serious side, and we take our-
selves seriously, but we are writing for the
public, and there is only a section of the pub-
lic that is interested in news related material,
and those are the people we are focusing on.
We know that this concept has been success-
ful in other countries. Look at the Economist,
for example: While sales figures for most
magazines in the world are on the decline,
sales figures for the Economist have tripled
in just a few years.
There is an enormous supply of informa-
tion in our society, not least perhaps with the
addition of blogs, and that is why I think we
need a magazine that is selective. The idea is
that this magazine should be the only thing
you need to read to follow the weekly news
and to know what is going on in society. But
we also have everything else that matters.
Cultural material, you should only have to
read the Krónika to know what is going on
in culture, sports, news, etc. We are betting
on this formula, and I think it will prove to be
successful, especially with the group of jour-
nalists we managed to put together. People
who have years of experience in preparing
information for the public and put it in con-
text, and now they have an opportunity to
do the news in their own way. What we
want to do is to have journalists cover issues
that they are experts on.
When we, as journalists, are covering
issues that we know inside out, like Arna
Schram, who has written about politics for
(Iceland’s biggest daily newspaper) Morgun-
blaðið for ten years, she should not have to
seek an expert’s opinion of what happens in
case of this or that, she knows this herself.
She knows as well as anyone how the po-
litical game is played, because she has been
covering it for so long. Aðalheiður Inga, with
her years of experience in covering foreign
politics, can tell us as well as anyone what
there is to know about the US presidential
elections this spring. She does not have to
seek an expert’s opinion to put things in con-
text. This is what we want to do, and I hope
the public will realise this.
What about the business model itself?
What sort of ratio are you aiming for in
regards to advertisements against edi-
torial content, and subscription versus
single sales copies?
Most of our revenue should come from sub-
scriptions and single sales, only a small por-
tion from advertisements. I think advertise-
ment ratio should be around 20%. We are
betting on people being prepared to buy our
product. There are 5000 people who buy
(Icelandic version of Se og Hör or Hello, if you
will) Séð og Heyrt, so why should people not
want to buy the Krónika? We actually need
more readers than Séð og Heyrt, but I think
we can get that, and I think others believe
that as well, otherwise I could not have got-
ten all these qualified journalists onboard.
Of course this is a very competitive field,
but I am sometimes reminded of a friend of
my husband, who was asked if there would
be room for the fourth bar in Reykjavík: after
going through the calculations, he said there
was no way a fourth bar in Reykjavík could
carry itself. We all know how that turned
out. If no one dares to try, we would never
get anything new.
If No One Dares to Try, We Would Never
Get Anything New.
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson Photo by Skari
Lagadeild
Í lagadeild er boðið upp á viðskiptalögfræði
sem samsett er úr greinum lögfræði, fjármála
og viðskipta. Námið er afar hagnýtt og getur
verið góður undirbúningur fyrir atvinnulífið
eða frekara nám. Nemendur útskrifast með
BS gráðu í viðskiptalögfræði.
Viðskiptadeild
Alhliða viðskiptanám sem ætlað er að búa
nemendur undir ábyrgðar-, forystu- og
stjórnunarstörf í innlendu og alþjóðlegu
samkeppnisumhverfi. Í BS námi í
viðskiptafræði eru kennd öll helstu svið
stjórnunar, rekstrar og viðskipta.
Félagsvísindadeild
Deildin býður upp á grunnnám til BA í HHS
(heimspeki, hagfræði og stjórnmálafræði).
Grunnnám í HHS er traustur undirbúningur
fyrir hvers kyns framhaldsnám á sviði hug- og
félagsvísinda, til meistara- eða doktorsgráðu
og fyrir störf á alþjóðlegum vinnumarkaði.
Minnum á að við erum þegar farin að taka á móti umsóknum í allar deildir skólans.
Því fyrr sem þú sækir um, því meiri möguleika áttu á námsvist. Umsóknareyðublöð
eru á heimasíðu skólans, www.bifrost.is
Stjórnenda- og leiðtogaskóli í hartnær 100 ár
Háskólinn á Bifröst er eini „campus“-skólinn
í félagsvísindum á Íslandi.
Nemendur vinna raunhæf verkefni
í gegnum allt námið.
Nær helmingur nemenda dvelur
eitt misseri erlendis t.d. í Kína.
Háskólinn á Bifröst býður upp á
mjög öflugt fjarnám.
70% útskrifaðra nemenda
Háskólans á Bifröst eru komnir
í stjórnunarstarf innan 5 ára
að námi loknu.