Insight Shapes News

Will young people start paying for news when they turn 40? Or are publishers betting their future on a habit that may never develop?

Kerstin Hasse, who leads INMA’s Young Audiences Initiative, joins me on Insight Shapes News to discuss what it takes to make journalism relevant to the next generation.

Her starting point: young people don’t hate news. They hate how it is packaged and delivered.

We talk about why publishers struggle to turn interest into subscriptions, what news organisations can learn from creators, and whether offering the full subscription as the only way in leaves potential customers behind.

From The Economist’s approach to different subscription products to The Boston Globe’s B-Side community, we explore how publishers are building new relationships with their audiences.

We also look inside the newsroom. Who gets to make decisions? Are social media and video teams treated as journalists? And are publishers listening to the younger colleagues already working alongside them?

A conversation about young audiences, changing habits, and making news worth coming back to.

Follow Insight Shapes News for more conversations about journalism, audiences, technology and the business of news.

Some news is too important for anyone to miss. Does that mean everyone should see the same homepage?

“The king is dead” has long been Nils’s example of a story in demos for personalization with news publishers and broadcasters, that must stay at the top, regardless of what an algorithm thinks a reader wants. It raises a question at the heart of news personalization: when one story matters to everyone, where does personalization belong?

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise welcomes back Christoph Schmitz, Product Manager for Curate, Schibsted’s content recommendation system.

Together, they explore how editorial judgment and personalization work during major breaking news. Christoph explains the different layers of editorial control: deciding which stories can appear, what everyone needs to see, and where recommendations can help readers find relevant coverage.

The conversation also challenges what reading behaviour tells us. Following every World Cup story doesn’t necessarily make someone a lifelong football fan. How quickly should recommendation systems forget yesterday’s interests?

And towards the end, Christoph raises a question that could change how newsrooms work: what would a fully personalized homepage look like if editors couldn’t pin stories, but still retained editorial control?

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Should personalization be switched off during major breaking news?
• What editors control before an algorithm recommends anything
• Why the homepage remains a shared reference point
• Designing for occasional readers, not just the most active users
• Why recommendation systems need to forget
• Preparing news products for sudden traffic surges
• A future with editorial control, but without pinning

For anyone working with homepage strategy, personalization, or newsroom product development, this episode explores how to balance what matters to everyone with what matters to each reader.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, technology, and the choices shaping the news industry.

Most people in media have not heard the term "change tax," but they have felt it. Selma Stern describes it as work that keeps coming back without ever getting resolved, like the same alignment meeting held three times in a year, with nothing decided each time.

In this episode, host Nils Ove Håland Riise talks with Selma Stern, an independent advisor to media companies. Stern has worked as Chief of Staff at Axel Springer, Chief Membership Officer at Business Insider, and Chief Customer Officer at Fortune, after starting her career at BCG.

Her main point centers on how newsroom structures have not kept pace with how the work itself has changed. In the print era, roles were fixed and predictable. An editor-in-chief's job description barely changed from year to year, and the workflow, from writer to editor to press, was linear and well understood. Digital broke that. Editors now need to work fluently with product, data, and technology teams that speak a different language and move on a different rhythm. AI is accelerating that shift again, requiring even more flexibility and cross-team coordination than the digital transition already demanded. Stern argues that many media companies are still organized the way they were for print, and that structure is becoming a real constraint as the pace of change increases.

To see whether this pattern holds up across the industry, Stern analyzed employee reviews from 20 publishers in 9 countries, looking for language about friction (silos, unclear ownership) versus language about integration (clear roles, teams working well together). Publishers with the most friction language were shrinking or had recently laid off staff. Publishers that were growing, including the New York Times, the Economist, and Le Monde, showed more integration language than friction.

That pattern shows up clearly in a real example. In the same week in February 2026, the New York Times announced record subscriber growth while the Washington Post's struggles were widely reported. Stern argues the real difference is not who owns each company, but how each one is organized.

The episode ends with a look ahead: micropayments, AI agents that could buy articles on a reader's behalf, and whether subscriptions are still the right model for news.

Topics covered:

• What the change tax is, in Selma Stern's own words
• Why print-era roles and workflows do not translate to digital and AI
• How editors now need to work across product, data, and technology teams
• How Stern measured this across 20 publishers using employee reviews

• New York Times and Washington Post: same week, opposite results
• Micropayments, AI agents, and the future of subscriptions

Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and structural change in the news industry.

You can read more about the change-tax here:

https://asternlook.substack.com/p/the-change-tax?triedRedirect=true

Find Selma Stern:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/selmastern/

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise sits down with Helge Voll Hustad, Homepage Editor at VG — Norway's largest news site, where he curates the homepage with news for millions of Norwegians.

They start with VG's now-famous "Ice Ice Baby" homepage, run in the middle of one of the darkest news months of the year, and what it says about the room editors have to experiment, even on a heavy news day.

From there, Helge walks through the real mechanics of editing a tabloid homepag at scale: why "the mix" of hard news and light news is a constant balancing act, why a billionaire's name in a headline often underperforms simply writing "the billionaire," and why familiar faces like Prime Minister Støre don't need a caption at all — something AI headline tools still can't reliably figure out.

The conversation also digs into personalization and control. Helge used to be able to place every single story on VG's front page by hand. Now an algorithm controls everything below the top 20 — and he's candid about what that trade-off costs an editor, what VG would need to see before moving that line further, and how the team weighs personalization against its societal responsibility to surface hard news.

They close on the three KPIs VG actually optimizes for, the "superuser trap" of editing for readers who visit eight times a day versus once, and why VG's extreme high direct-traffic share makes the homepage worth protecting.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• The "Ice Ice Baby" homepage and how far editorial humor can go
• What a homepage editor actually does, curating 70–80 live articles
• "The mix" — balancing hard news, sport, celebrity and politics
• Why an NYT study of tens of thousands of A/B tests found no universal rule
• Billionaire vs. named billionaire, and when a picture replaces a caption
• Where AI headline generation breaks down — and why
• Losing control: from editing every story to only the top 20
• The bonfire principle vs. personalization, and the societal obligation problem
• Clicks, quick exit, and demographics — VG's three core KPIs
• The "superuser" trap: editing for readers who visit 8x a day vs. once
• Why so much of VG's traffic comes directly to the Homepage
• A closing question passed from Tarmo Paju (Delfi) on journalism's role in covering war

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and the structural changes shaping the news industry.

What happens when two people who talk before every episode finally sit down in front of a microphone together?

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise is joined by Tarjei Gilbrant, CEO and co-founder of Kilkaya, fresh from the INMA World Media Congress in Berlin.

Both participated in separate study tours visiting major German publishers. This conversation is their debrief — not a polished summary, but a direct exchange on what actually made an impression, and what it means for the industry.

The episode covers several publishers across both tours. Die Zeit stood out for its multi-format strategy and how it uses investigative data journalism — including an AI-assisted project that made Nazi party membership records from the US National Archives searchable for the first time. Tagesspiegel surfaced something most publishers quietly recognize but rarely address: their homepages are built for people who visit ten times a day, not the majority who arrive once.

Media Pioneer operated from two boats on a Berlin river. That detail aside, what made it notable was a subscription model reaching 76,000 paying subscribers — and a community-first approach that includes a tier priced at 10,000 euros per year.

Der Spiegel ended its relationship with Outbrain and Teads. Tarjei explains why he sees this as worth celebrating, and why he considers that category of widget a structural problem for editorial trust — not just a vendor choice.

Running through all of it is a question the industry keeps circling back to: in a world where AI can generate content at scale and platforms continue to reduce referral traffic, what is the actual advantage of being a publisher?

🎧 Topics we cover:

• How Die Zeit used AI to make historical Nazi membership records searchable and what it produced editorially
• Why the homepage is still optimized for the wrong reader
• The build-or-buy question and why enthusiasm is a productivity multiplier
• Why trust is no longer just an advantage — it may be the only one
• What Media Pioneer gets right about community and subscription
• The campfire analogy and why shared editorial context still matters
• Why AI confabulates with confidence on low-data subjects — and what that means for breaking news
• Der Spiegel removing Outbrain and Teads, and the revenue outcome
• Why republishing the same content as everyone else has no future
• What multi-format strategy actually looks like when done well

If you work in newsroom leadership, editorial strategy, product, or publishing, this episode is a ground-level account of what some of Europe's most interesting publishers are doing — and what the industry still needs to figure out.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and the structural changes shaping the news industry.

Content Personalization in news products has typically been placed in low-risk areas—below articles or in separate recommendation modules further down on the page.

What happens when it is introduced higher up the page? We talk about the top!

In most news products, around 80% of clicks happen on the top part of the page. Very few readers scroll far enough to engage with content further down. This makes the top section both the most valuable and the most sensitive area to change.

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise speaks with Tarmo Paju (Managing Editor - Development and Innovation) and Ivar Krustok (Chief AI Officer) from Delfi about their approach to testing personalization in a more visible editorial context.

Delfi did not begin with the homepage. The work started in the sports section—a high-volume environment with frequent updates and a loyal audience. This provided a controlled setting to test how personalization affects both editorial workflows and user behaviour.

Even in this setting, the questions were familiar. Editorial teams need to understand how content is selected, how priorities are set, and what level of control remains. All the things that we question with Black box personalization creating echo chambers...

The discussion focuses on how Delfi structured this work. Personalization is applied within defined boundaries, where editors can prioritise, override, and adjust outcomes. The system is based on simple signals, including whether a story has already been read, combined with editorial input.

This changes how the front of a section is managed. Some manual work is reduced, while responsibility for key editorial choices remains.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Why personalization is usually limited to lower parts of the page
  
• Why Delfi chose the sports section as a starting point
  
• How personalization behaves in a high-volume news environment
  
• What editorial control looks like in practice
  
• How pinning and override functions are used
  
• Why transparency matters for internal adoption
  
• The role of simple behavioural signals in ranking content
  
• How workflows change for front page editors
  
• What to consider before expanding to the homepage
  
• The relationship between relevance, coverage, and editorial responsibility

If you work with editorial strategy, product, or personalization, this episode examines how these systems can be introduced without disrupting core editorial principles.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and structural change in the news industry.

Technology used to feel neutral. Infrastructure choices were seen as operational decisions handled by IT teams. That assumption is now being challenged.

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise speaks with Endre, a technology strategist and founder of the initiative Choose European, which maps European software alternatives and promotes greater digital sovereignty.

The conversation explores why technology infrastructure is increasingly becoming a strategic question for news organizations. As AI accelerates, cloud platforms consolidate power, and geopolitical tensions influence technology ecosystems, decisions about vendors, models, and infrastructure can directly affect independence, cost structures, and long-term flexibility.

Endre explains why the idea that technology is neutral is fading. Infrastructure providers control data flows, AI capabilities rely on massive datasets, and dependency on a small group of global platforms can create strategic vulnerabilities for publishers and companies.

The conversation examines what realistic alternatives look like. Rather than framing the choice as Europe versus the US, Endre argues for hybrid strategies that combine global innovation with diversified infrastructure, open-source technologies, and regional providers.

For media organizations, this shifts technology from a procurement decision to a leadership responsibility.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Why technology is no longer politically neutral

• How AI is accelerating infrastructure dependency
• The strategic risks of vendor lock-in in cloud and AI platforms
• Why newsroom technology decisions belong in the boardroom
• Digital sovereignty and what it actually means in practice
• How publishers may be repeating the same dependency pattern seen with search and social
• Why hybrid infrastructure strategies may become the norm
• The role of open-source technologies in reducing strategic risk
• Why Europe is seeing a renewed push for sovereign AI and cloud infrastructure
• How media organizations can start diversifying their technology stack

If you work in newsroom leadership, editorial strategy, product, or technology, this episode explores why infrastructure decisions may become one of the most important strategic choices facing media organizations in the coming decade.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, subscriptions, and the structural changes shaping the news industry.

Chapters:

00:00 The Shift in Tech Control and Societal Development

00:16 Andre Dingsør's Perspective on Digital Sovereignty

00:44 The Changing Nature of Technology as a Geopolitical Tool

00:56 Biggest Underestimated Tech Risks for News Publishers

01:04 Technology and Trust in Journalism

01:25 What Newsrooms Need to Understand About Tech Changes

02:00 Andre Dingsør's Background and Focus on Sovereignty

02:12 The Political Shift in Tech Infrastructure

04:03 AI as an Accelerator of Geopolitical Power

05:47 The European Response to Tech Sovereignty

08:55 Dependency on US Tech and Social Media

10:00 European Cloud and AI Solutions for Media

11:36 Influence of Infrastructure on Editorial Independence

12:58 Bias and Control in Large Language Models

15:07 Trust and Data Security in AI and Cloud

17:29 The Cost Wave of AI Infrastructure

19:35 Migration Challenges in Tech Stack Dependencies

20:50 Building Digital Sovereignty Through European Solutions

23:35 Europe's Viable Alternatives to US Tech Giants

26:43 US Tech Mindset and European Market Dynamics

28:21 Balancing Global AI Leadership with Responsibility

29:41 Using Hybrid Models for Cost and Sovereignty

33:30 Local Language Models and Cultural Nuances

35:09 Practical Steps for News Publishers on Tech Sovereignty

39:11 The Future of Rebalancing Global Tech Power

40:18 Leadership in the Age of Technological Change

42:29 The Role of Media in Crisis and Information Dissemination

What does it take to lead journalists through uncertainty, resistance, and constant change?

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise speaks with Jeremy Clifford, former Editor-in-Chief of one of the UK’s largest media organisations and now a leadership coach working with newsrooms.

Jeremy argues that the demands placed on newsroom leaders have shifted significantly. Editors are expected to manage AI adoption, interpret data, drive subscription growth, and guide teams through restructuring and uncertainty. Many were promoted for their journalistic ability rather than for leading people.

The conversation examines where leadership most often weakens: unclear communication, misalignment between strategy and daily priorities, reluctance to address performance issues, and insufficient preparation for handling resistance to change.

Jeremy outlines practical approaches from his coaching work, including how to structure performance conversations, how to establish authority without needing expertise in every technical area, and how to maintain trust during restructures.

The discussion also addresses how data and AI influence editorial decision-making, and why leaders must operate with incomplete information while remaining clear in direction.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Why newsroom leadership struggles during transformation

• The difference between editorial skill and leadership capability

• A structured method for handling difficult conversations

• How tone and communication shapes newsroom culture

• Leading journalists who resist strategic change

• Managing trust and morale during restructuring

• The balance between authority and influence

• How data and AI affect decision-making

• The importance of clarity under pressure

• Whether leadership can be developed

If you work in newsroom leadership, editorial strategy, or product, this episode offers a focused discussion on how leadership shapes organisational outcomes.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on leadership, personalization, subscriptions, and structural change in journalism.

Take your Leadership Readiness Assessment test from Jeremy:

https://assessment.chrysalis-leadership.com/

Chapters:

00:00 The Need for Quality Leadership in Newsrooms

02:49 Navigating Change and Digital Transformation

05:16 Building Effective Leadership Skills

08:00 The Importance of Leadership Tone

11:07 Earning Influence in a Newsroom

14:01 Selecting the Right Team Members

16:50 Handling Difficult Conversations

19:33 The Role of Empathy in Leadership

22:06 Communicating Change Effectively

25:05 The Impact of AI and Data on Leadership

27:45 Values and Trust in Leadership

30:24 The Challenges of Leadership Under Pressure

33:10 The Evolution of Leadership in Newsrooms

35:59 The Future of Leadership with AI

38:47 Navigating Data in Leadership

41:48 The Importance of Clarity and Authenticity

44:31 Connecting with Staff in High-Pressure Situations

47:06 Is Leadership for Everyone?

49:52 Self-Reflection and Growth in Leadership

52:50 Final Thoughts on Leadership Challenges

How should personalization work in journalism when trust, fairness, and editorial responsibility are at stake?

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise speaks with Christoph Schmitz, Product Manager at Schibsted Media and lead of Curate, the content recommendation system used across several of the largest news brands in the Nordics.

Christoph has worked with content recommendation for a long time. In this conversation, he explains how personalization is applied in practice inside a large media organization, and where the real risks appear when editorial judgment, algorithms, and audience behavior intersect.

The discussion focuses on why segmentation models borrowed from advertising often fall short in a journalistic context, how dominant audience groups can shape recommendations in unintended ways, and why adding more data does not automatically lead to better outcomes. Christoph also shares how collaborative filtering is used at Schibsted, why it relies on reading behavior rather than tags or assumptions, and what its limitations are.

A central theme throughout the episode is the role of the homepage. We explore why readers see different stories, why this can be difficult to explain internally, and why the very top of the page still carries editorial meaning even as personalization expands elsewhere. Christoph introduces the idea of the homepage as a shared reference point — a place where readers understand what matters at a given moment, whether they read every story or not.

🎧 Topics we cover:

• What personalization means in an editorial context
• Why segmentation introduces structural bias in news recommendation
• How dominant user groups influence what journalism gets visibility
• Collaborative filtering explained through real newsroom examples
• How demographic data can reduce model performance
• Personalization as a tool for fairer distribution of journalism
• Why readers see different versions of the homepage
• The editorial role of the homepage top
• Why news products should not be designed like social platforms
• The “bonfire” metaphor and its relevance for shared public understanding
• Why personalization requires gradual, incremental change

If you work with personalization, content recommendation, homepage strategy, or editorial-product collaboration, this episode offers a detailed and experience-based look at how these systems function in reality, and what needs to be handled with care.

🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, personalization, and the strategic choices shaping the news industry.

Chapters

00:00 The Risks of Personalization

02:47 Understanding Personalization in Media

05:32 The Evolution of Personalization Models

08:10 Collaborative Filtering and Its Impact

10:54 The Role of Demographics in Personalization

13:35 Challenges in Personalization for Newsrooms

16:25 The Importance of Content Pool for Personalization

18:41 The Misconceptions of Personalization

21:17 The Future of Personalization in Journalism

24:22 The Role of Desk Editors in Automated Systems

26:59 The Concept of Liquid Content

29:32 Building a Personalization Team

32:04 Measuring the Value of Journalism

35:06 Visualizing a Personalized Homepage

Research paper on personalization and long-term reader engagement:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09136

INMA case study:

https://www.inma.org/blogs/ideas/post.cfm/personalising-the-front-page-isn-t-just-smart-it-s-fair

Trailer photo credit: Foto: Mathias Broe.

Why do people really pay for news in 2025 — and what keeps them paying month after month?

In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise sits down with Dominic Grzbielok, Head of Paid Content s at Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). Dominic is a former journalist turned product leader who has spent the last 15 years living in the intersection of newsroom culture, product strategy, and subscription growth.

SZ has set an ambitious north-star: fund the entire company through digital subscriptions by 2030. That goal shapes everything — from what the homepage looks like, to how paywalls work, to what metrics matter most. Dominic shares how SZ is evolving from reach-first thinking to serving loyal subscribers, why churn is the ultimate truth, and how habits — not hacks — are the real retention engine.

We also dive into the most heated questions publishers face right now:
Should personalization climb higher on the homepage?
Do dynamic paywalls beat hard paywalls?
And in a world of AI answers and LLM distribution… do we still need a homepage at all?

🎧 Topics we cover:

• Why people subscribe to news — and why “feeling informed” beats raw content

• The 2030 goal: going all-in on digital subscription revenue

• Why revenue matters more than subscriber counts (and the danger of discount addiction)

• The homepage as front door and brand signal — with 3/4 of it paywalled

• How SZ introduced hybrid personalization (editorial top, algorithmic modules below)

• What it takes to earn editorial trust in personalization: dashboards, rules, fast fixes

• The single most important metric

• Habits that retain: newsletters, podcasts, quizzes, games, and serialized content

• Bundling as a retention strategy — including SZ’s winning sports bundle with Kicker

• Why regional mega-bundles are harder in Germany than in the Nordics

• Dynamic paywalls: promising, but not worth the complexity yet

• AI distribution and licensing: partner, don’t panic — but don’t give away the brand

• The future for small publishers: specialization, local dominance, and cost discipline

• Dominic’s biggest lesson: the best products happen when journalists, designers, and PMs build together

If you’re working on subscriptions, personalization, homepage strategy, or trying to navigate the AI-era business model shift — this conversation is a grounded, practical walk through what it takes to build a subscriber-first newsroom without losing your soul.