The document discusses how Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), a Swedish newspaper, has transformed its journalism and production process through a "Fast & Slow" model. This involves pre-producing at least 40% of content 1-3 weeks in advance through long-term planning, which has allowed SvD to cut costs by 25% while improving quality, winning more awards, and gaining market share over its main competitor. The Fast & Slow model separates coverage into "fast" breaking news and "slow" planned/pre-produced content, streamlining production and enabling a higher standard of reporting.

1. FAST & SLOW
– How well-planned
journalism and
pre-production has
transformed Svenska
Dagbladet
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2. Making more with less
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3. Since 2009, SvD has cut the
newsroom workforce by 25%,
reorganized - and improved
editorial quality dramatically,
won more awards than ever
before, securing the most
satisfied readers in the
competitive Stockholm market.
This is how.
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4. This is Svenska Dagbladet
Part of Schibsted Media Group. 175 journalists.
Sweden’s 5th largest newspaper.
Circulation: 185 000. Daily print readership: 473 000
Business section Sweden’s largest business paper:
Daily print readership: 410 000
Sweden’s 3rd largest newssite.
Weekly unique users: 1,5 million
Sweden’s 3rd largest mobile newssite:
Weekly unique users: 330 000
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5. Keeping print readership up
Daily readership, 1000’
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6. Gaining market shares
in print circulation
Gap between SvD and main competitor Dagens
Nyheter halved in 7 years
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7. Market leader on digital platforms
with continued rapid growth
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8. 2 problems for print news
Risk of print content becoming irrelevant
Bottlenecks in
production flow
for print
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9. The risks of bottlenecking
When too many stories are
delivered late in the day/
evening, it leads to...
* More mistakes
* Lower quality in design Text
* Less flexibility
* Loss of editorial control
* Higher costs, with more staff
working late and more editions/
print intakes
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10. ...and the news are still old
Text
Making a newspaper from scratch
each day leads to an emphasis on
general news stories. From yesterday.
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11. Rethinking the role of print
• More focus on agenda-setting news, especially
on weekdays
• More focus on storytelling and in-depth stories,
especially on weekends
• More ”social journalism”, where print and digital
channels interact, to engage readers
• Less of yesterday’s news, except on large news
stories
• Keep developing, building on the unique
strengths of print
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12. Rethinking the organization
• Daytime production of the newspaper
• At least 40 % of all news pages pre-produced
• Minimal desks at evenings (cut by 75%)
• More focus on planning and idea development
for print - and on live coverage, reader
interactivity for thedigital channels
• Reorganized newsroom to enable more agenda-
setting newswork, in all channels
• A 2 speed-organization: Fast and Slow
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13. Fast and Slow
• The difference between own stories and general
stories is bigger than between print and digital
• Working with our own agenda and the general
news agenda must be handled differently
• Both need to be integrated, but led and coached
differently
• Fast is now and for tomorrow’s paper, for large
stories
• Slow is planned and pre-produced
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14. How it works
• On each desk, we have one slow and one fast
news editor, on a rolling schedule
• News reporters are divided into fast (now!) and
slow (planned)
• Slow editors focus on planning, idea development,
coaching and integrated publishing/presentation
• Fast editors focus on happening/developing news
stories
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15. Long-term planning
• Major news stories planned 1-3
weeks ahead - and pre-produced
• All feature/in-depth stories pre-
produced
• Long-term planning workshops
for 3-6 months
• Front pages planned 7-10 days
ahead, to improve quality
• Magazine approach to own news/
stories
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16. Ridiculous? Or just logical?
”When we first heard, we thought that’s ridiculous — how
could you do a daily paper and have half of it planned? It
comes back to how you think of news. There are so many
stories you could do at any point in time, and what
newspapers tend to do — to be concise, the way we all
grew up — was to leave everything till the last minute, and
then between 4 o’clock and 10 o’clock in the evening, make
a paper. So you have this huge down period at the
beginning of the day and then this sort of crazy period for 6
hours.
We haven’t done 40 percent — we’re aiming for 30 percent
of content pre-planned. It helps you even out production, it
saves on costs — which we have to do — and it produces a
paper which is more effective and more analytical”
ALAN RUSBRIDGER, THE GUARDIAN, to NIEMAN LAB
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17. A new mindset
• More daytime production means
• ...earlier deadlines, which demands
• ...better planning, which demands
• ...better idea processes, which demands
• ...better knowledge and sources and better ways of
communicating internally and with the readers
• This affects everyone in the newsroom
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18. Tools in the process
• Clear, measurable objectives for each
department and each journalist
• Daily evaluation of news and agenda-setting,
compared to the competitors
• Internal benchmarks to identify the best stories,
best scoops and best innovation
• Better tools for planning and communication
• Transparent planning, on whiteboards to
increase newsroom engagement
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19. Why plan?
• Great parts of every newspaper CAN be produced
in advance, due to its character and content
• Print needs to look more ahead, not backwards
• To stay relevant and competitive, print stories
need to be more exclusive and better presented
(infographics, visual storytelling etc)
• Planning ups the ante for news stories and how
they are presented, which increases quality
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20. Planning increases flexibility
• When large news stories occur, we can put more
resources into them, which helps both online and
print
• News always comes first: front-page plans are
shredded one day out of three. But just for really
big stories.
• Since we reorganized, we have won international
awards for our coverage of the tsunami in Japan
and the terror attacks in Norway, showing that
the news pulse doesn’t suffer by our model
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21. SND, Best In Show & Gold Award:
This is one of the best
pieces of breaking news
coverage we’ve ever
seen.
It could be held up as a
template for how to
handle a breaking news
story M
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22. Effects of the Fast & Slow Model
• More scoops and agenda setting stories (SvD
today more quoted by other media than our
competitor: doubled in three years)
• More investigative reporting/series of articles
• Better coverage of big, general news stories
• Better design/presentation/visuals
• Better front pages
• Better channel integration
• Better working conditions
• More creativity in the newsroom
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23. Challenges
• This is not a production matter: you need to
change the way everyone in the newsroom work
• The balance between fast and slow is crucial; you
must learn when to stick t and when to desert
your plan
• Print journalism need to change more - but also to
be developed more - to maintain its relevance
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24. Our conclusion
• Workdays starting with blank
pages are more stressful,
requires more resources and
ends in lower quality
• Planning and working in
several tempos makes it
possible to achieve higher
quality with less resources
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25. thank you…
tack Martin Jönsson
Deputy Editor-in-chief, SvD, mj@svd.se
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