A little rocking of the boat took place here in Norway today. News editor
Hans-Christian Vadseth from
Verdens Gang, Norway's biggest daily, is leaving the paper to be editor-in-chief for not-yet-launched
N24no. That's quite a leap.
The new website, planned to go on air April 18, is a joint venture between
Aftenposten Multimedia and
VG Multimedia. These two companies are both owned by
Schibsted. Schibsted has had great success in Sweden with
N24.se, and the plan is to make a Norwegian cousin.
Here are some reasons why they may just succeed:
- N24.no will post stories on and feature stories from Aftenposten.no and VG Nett, thereby drawing on the resources of two well-established websites.
- VG Nett has massive traffic; Aftenposten has good business journalism.
- None of the established business news websites, like Hegnar.no, DN.no, and iMarkedet.no, really have a crossover appeal to the general news audience.
- TV2 Nettavisen's newly launched business news website NA24.no has failed to make an impact, with just 111,000 unique visitors last week, compared to VG Nett's 1.8 million.
- The people just hired (Norwegian language) from VG and Aftenposten are good journalists and smart guys.
- The times they are-a-changing anyway, balls are in play, and most bets are off.
