Zetland expands into Finland, disrupting the market with audio-first constructive journalism

Danish news organisation Zetland has expanded its innovative audio-driven news membership model into Finland with this month's launch of Uusi Juttu, after a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Uusi Juttu went live on 15 January with 13k pre-paid annual members on board. It aimed for 5k when it started a one-month crowdfunding campaign back in September 2024.

That includes 9,000 people taking a reduced annual membership at €100, rising to €120 until the end of the campaign. Membership costs €135 (£114) as of launch, all without Finland's 10 per cent VAT on journalism.

Readers short on cash can become members for as little as €25 for the first year. But only a minority take up this option.

The Danish template

Zetland launched in 2017 and had broken even within three years. Since then, it has built up a 40k paying membership base, finding that people in their 20s and 30s enjoy its blend of progressive news topics, constructive journalism and audio content.

Key stat: Four in five members engage with Zetland's audio content, so journalists record an audio version of every article or their story is made audio-first. Zetland publishes considerably little content as a result.

• Read more: Audio articles help Zetland gain 2,000 new members during lockdown

Zetland's co-founder Jakob Moll thinks Uusi Juttu can break even in just one year by reaching 20k paying members, because it starts with the advantage of established workflows, insights and, of course, hindsight.

Heli Blåfield / Zetland

Jakob Moll, co-founder of Zetland

"We founded Zetland on a premise that reader relationships are built on your tone, listening to them, transparency, personality and mission," says Moll, now international director.

"Now we know how to operationalise all of that. Do we truly understand why this works? Uusi Juttu proves that we are onto something that transcends the Nordic regions."

Uusi Juttu will run on Zetland's model and technology, but the new 25-strong team is autonomous and will make decisions independently. Moll jokes: "If they have a more valuable solution to overcome a challenge, we'll copy them."

Other achievements to date:

• Zetland won the Cavling Prize (dubbed the Danish Pulitzer Award) and the most prestigious award in the country for its investigation into the mink breeding scandal. A proof of concept for the rigour of constructive journalism, says Moll - and "one for the haters".
• Zetland also developed an AI startup called Good Tape as another revenue stream. It claims to be able to transcribe audio-to-text in any language, now licensed in 180 countries by 10,000 customers. It is based on an open-source generative AI.

Why Finland? And what next?

Denmark and Finland are comparable countries, despite their language differences. They have similar populations (5.8m and 5.5 respectively). The news markets are also similar.

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 shows exactly this, with similar proportions of those who pay for news (17 per cent in Denmark, 20 per cent in Finland) and high levels of trust towards the media (57 per cent in Denmark and 69 per cent in Finland). They are also amongst the highest markets for a free press (Denmark 2nd and Finland 5th on the World Press Freedom Index).

"It's a myth that Nordics have the urge to pay for journalism - we just pay for everything," jokes Moll.

Nordic countries have strong welfare states offering high income to citizens. They are used to paying into these systems - especially for news - and seeing it as a societal benefit.

Both countries have dominant public service broadcasters (DR and TV2 in Denmark; Yle in Finland). But while Denmark has a fairly pluralistic scene of newspapers, Finland's daily Helsingin Sanomat has a tight grip on the market. It presents a viable opportunity for a disruptor like Uusi Juttu.

Norway is the most likely next stop on their expansion plans. Iceland is "too small" and Sweden is "too different". Then again, Moll thinks the Zetland model needs to stretch out of the Nordic world - as all markets grapple with the challenge of getting the next generation of news consumers to pay for news, eyeing up Northern European countries like Germany as possible future targets.

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