
Presented by Janne Rygh, Editorial Developer


January 29, 2025. Case no.18
Attracting young readers
How a bold test to focus only on younger readers drives traffic and subscriptions across all age groups at Amedia
Norwegian group Amedia has more subscribers over 80 than under 40, a problem they’ve been working to address for a long time – while still, unconsciously, writing mainly for their loyal, older readers. A year ago, Amedia’s editorial development department suggested the group try a radical new approach: What if we ignore the metrics on what drives reading in the older loyal subscriber base, and focus only on the under 40s? The team found two local editors willing to try it out, stripping their live dashboards of any data not relating to young readers. The newsrooms quickly learned a key lesson – young people want to read about young people. And, as it turns out, so do older ones.
Presented by Janne Rygh, Editorial Developer
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By Niklas Jonason
Article Summary
Norwegian media group Amedia faced a challenge: it had more subscribers over 80 than under 40. Despite efforts since 2018 to attract younger readers, newsrooms unconsciously catered to their older, loyal audience. In early 2024, editorial developer Janne Rygh proposed a radical approach—ignore older readers' metrics and focus solely on engaging under-40s.
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Two local newspapers, Halden Arbeiderblad and Romerikes Blad, adopted this strategy by modifying their editorial dashboards to track only younger readers' engagement. They prioritized topics relevant to young audiences, such as career, real estate, and family life. The results were striking—Romerikes Blad saw a 30% increase in under-40 subscribers while overall readership grew, proving that older readers also enjoyed the content.
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The shift required a newsroom-wide cultural change, with workshops guiding journalists to create stories resonating across generations. While ad revenue remains unchanged, Amedia plans to expand the initiative. Key success factors include strong editorial leadership and using data-driven insights to shape content. Ultimately, the project demonstrates that focusing on younger readers can enhance engagement across all age groups.
About Amedia – a local media group that spans all of Norway
Titles & Readers
• 110 newspapers and 20 partner newspapers
• 2 million daily readers
• 790,000 subscribers in total
• 690,000 digital subscribers
• 580,000 digital-only subscribers
• 2.5 million registered aID accounts = more than half of Norwegians over 18 have an Amedia-account
• 87% of all pageviews are logged-in.
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​Staff & editorial development
• The local newspapers have between 2–70 employees
• In 2016-17 the central content development team was created
• Currently there are ten people working in this central team to support the titles.
• Mission: The team tries to identify what the most successful newsrooms do in different areas. And they inspire the editors to find areas for improvement and to learn from each other.
Journalist Janne Rygh has worked in Amedia since 2013, in various roles, including that of front page editor. She is now an editorial developer in the group’s central Content Development team in Oslo, where her job is to drive projects that support the work the local newsrooms do. It was in this role that she, at the beginning of 2024, came up with what she calls a “crazy idea” for how to address a longstanding problem – how to win and retain more young subscribers.
Let’s start by looking at the challenge…
The problem: More subscribers over 80 than under 40
Of Amedia’s 800,000 subscribers, 405,000 are over the age of 60 and 95,000 are over the age of 80. Which is more than the under-40s – a group of only about 95,000. This is not a new situation, it’s a problem that the group has worked to address since 2018. “We did a lot of analysis and started various projects. One thing we found out is that the age of the people we write about matters – when we feature people in their 20s it attracts readers of that age too.” The team led a number of pilot projects based on the new insights, “but after a while people kind of fell into old habits and went back to pleasing older readers,” said Janne.
Then the pandemic hit and suddenly young readers came onboard without Amedia having to work particularly hard to attract them. In 2021 the big question was how to now retain the new young subscribers. “We did focus groups and continued to stress the findings we’d gained already back in 2018.”
“What I’m trying to say is this is something we’ve focused on for a long time – we didn’t suddenly wake up in 2024 and say ‘we need to address the age problem’. But the fact remains, we still have more subscribers over 80 than we do under 40.” So, with all the work being done to attract young readers, the question Janne asked herself was; why had they not succeeded? “One of the reasons, I think, is that you become what you measure.”
She went on to explain what she meant by this, in a news media context. At Amedia, there are editorial dashboards in all the newsrooms and the north star number being tracked is How many subscribers read content every day. “We follow this number because we know that the more you read, the less likely you are to churn.”
This means that the newsrooms follow what the majority of readers like. And if the majority of readers are over 60, that’s the group who determines what “good content” looks like. “So basically we’ve become experts in pleasing this group. And if reader numbers are down on a sunny Saturday afternoon because nobody is reading news, what do we do? We write to please the old folks.”

The proposition: You become what you measure
The editorial dashboards were key to the radical idea that Janne Rygh took to her boss Markus Rask Jensen (who is a member of the Innovate Local Advisory Council). What if they were ignore the old folks completely and just write for the younger subscribers? In other words, what if they changed the north start to be: How many under 40 subscribers read content every day? Markus was a bit sceptical, but gave Janne the go-ahead to pitch the idea to two local newsrooms to test the new theory.
She asked Halden Arbeiderblad, a title with about 10 reporters and 8,000 subscribers – medium sized by Amedia standards. When the project started, Halden Arbeiderblad was already good at reaching young readers. The second newspaper Janne approached was Amedia’s biggest one, Romerikes Blad, with 30 reporters and about 30,000 subscribers. The editor-in-chief of Romerikes Blad had only been at the job for a couple of weeks when Janne pitched the idea, but he was immediately very keen to get onboard.
Hiding the older readers in the dashboard – and tracking live. Janne suggested that what the newsrooms should do was to change the North Star dashboard to only show consumption by under-40s (which immediately reduced the number of a tenth of what they used to be. The newsrooms were excited by the new north star dashboard, but were also keen to be able to see progress in realtime. Dashboard developer Kilkaya created a Young Demographics dashboard, and the project got started.
In May both news publishers started working towards only reaching subscribers under the age of 40. “From that day on, they did not pay any attention to the metrics for the rest of the subscribers at all.”
Learnings: 1. Complete change in how the newsroom works
Within weeks of the new dashboards going live, the entire newsroom way of working was clearly changing. At Romerikes Blad they did newsroom workshops and realised that they needed to do away with the old way of working – do an editorial re-set. They now focus on eight topic areas that particularly interest younger readers:
– Kindergarten / School / Family life
– Health / Lifestyle / Relationships
– Local business / Work / Career
– “Wallet stories” / Consumers / Groceries
– Housing / Real Estate
– Mobility / Traffic / Commuting
– Local municipalities
– Crime
Janne gave the example of Thor, a 59-year old journalist who she talked to when she visited the newsroom. He told her; “I've had to say no to some stories that I used to do, and which used to be really well read, because they don't target young people's lives. So I've had to change the way I do my job, basically.” He showed her the type of story he used to do, which would get great reader numbers – a local firm showing fantastic results, a story featuring the middle aged owner. Now Thor looks for equivalent stories, but about younger people, like the one shown in the illustration below, about 32-year old business owner Kina. The numbers speak for themselves. Romerikes Blad reaches more readers under 40, but also more readers in total.

The news editor at the same newspaper, Jon Theodore Hauger-Dalsgard, told Janne that he’d had to learn to be more direct in asking “Who cares?” and to say no to stories that don’t matter to the target group.
Learnings: 2. “Readers over 40 don’t abandon us”
Janne gave a number of story comparisons (illustrations below) which illustrate that the new types of stories resonate, not only with the under-40 readers, but also with all age groups. “The older readers don’t abandon us. They love what we give them,” said Janne.


Learnings: 3. While ignoring the majority, the minority – and overall numbers – grew
This graph shows the subscriber growth at Romerikes Blad since the beginning of the project. They have had a 30% growth of subscribers under 40 since May 2024 (indicated by the arrow). “Of course, we could ask ourselves, is this only because we switched the numbers? I think it's a combination of many things, but the changed approach has been a great success for Romerikes Blad as well as for Halden Arbeiderblad.

Editor-in-Chief Mads Storvik at Romerikes Blad comments that; “Focusing on young subscribers is the smartest thing we have done in my time at Romerikes Blad. It has made our product better overall, not only for the young audiences.”
Q&A with Janne Rygh
What has the reaction among journalists been, are they all happy with the new way of working?
“At Romerikes Blad a lot of the journalists are quite young, so it’s been quite easy for the editor to make these changes. At Halden Arbeiderblad I think only 2 out of the 10 journalists are under 40, and there were more questions around writing just for young people. We’re not saying that we're not supposed to write about old people's homes or things like that, but we need to do it in a way that also resonates with young people. How can I write this story in a way that also attracts younger readers? How can I make this story that is important, because we need to be doing our job as journalists and we need to cover the entire community. So that's been one of the most important challenges, I guess, for these two newsrooms.”
Hiding the older readers in the dashboard – and tracking live. Janne suggested that what the newsrooms should do was to change the North Star dashboard to only show consumption by under-40s (which immediately reduced the number of a tenth of what they used to be. The newsrooms were excited by the new north star dashboard, but were also keen to be able to see progress in realtime. Dashboard developer Kilkaya created a Young Demographics dashboard, and the project got started.
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Could you please tell us a bit more about the newsroom workshops at the bigger paper?
“The workshops were initially to determine what kinds of topics to focus on, based on analysis of the target group. After that the journalists got to wish for which area they wanted to cover, if they had maybe had a previous beat which was no longer going to be covered as much. So – in a nutshell the newsroom redefined what they were covering and who was doing what.”
“In a second big workshop, journalists were challenged to ask themselves how they could reach more readers under 40 every day. Like; ‘I'm going to ask myself, why is this relevant to Anne, 35? And these are three of the changes I'm going to make compared to how I work today. We then recently had a big workshop where we asked, out of all the things we said in September that we were going to do, what has been successful?’ So it’s about working around constant change in the newsroom.”
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How important was it to change the KPIs on the dashboard?
"That's a very good question. I think it's possible to have growth in this age group without changing. But the fact that we did change now makes it a lot easier to see what young audience is really like and what they really want to read.”
“Also, it's impossible to have green numbers if you don't pay attention to what young people want to read. So I think at least during the period where newsrooms needed to work on changing the way they work, it was very important. I don't know if it's important to only focus on these numbers forever and ever.”
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Would it make sense to just have part of the newsroom working on topics or working with a young reader focus and not all of it and so that others do other things? Or do you think it's really about having a one, like you say, a North Star?
This is exactly what Romerikes Blad did for a couple of years before they started this project. In other words, there was a group of four journalists working in the newsroom working specifically towards this target group. That worked to some degree. But then to make all the front page editors, all the journalists in all the different fields and all the different departments actually focus on the same thing – that’s a different thing. I think to achieve real results, you need to actually make it a newsroom thing rather than just a two-three people thing.”
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Did the average subscriber age go down in total / online, and if so, by how much?
"My analytics colleague took a look at average ages of new subscribers after we started the project and we see that it's gone down slightly. They are not huge differences, since we've been good at selling to the under-40 for some time. The main challenge has rather been to get them to read enough to then keep running their subscription."
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Is the "younger content" also affecting advertising – e g turnover, types of advertisers, sales organisation, and which ad products sell best?
This is the answer from our VP Ad Sales: "Unfortunately nothing has changed much commercially in the short term. In advertising, we're ruled by the laws of large numbers. Even if Romerikes Blad is successful in attracting younger readers, the numbers are small in terms of Amedia as a whole. So for ad sales centrally we're not seeing any effect from this project."
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Are there any plans for building new services, beyond traditional content, for the new target group, e g workplace (ads and editorial) and real estate advertising / content?
"We're continuously working to create new services for the new target group, and our entire development team are looking at new products, services and content that speaks even better to this group. In addition, there are several newspapers now joining the project, which will hopefully mean we'll learn even more about what they want and how they want to consume it."
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What are the Key Success Factors for someone wanting to copy your concept?
I think the most important thing is to have an editor-in-chief who really believes in the project and is able to generate enthusiasm in the team. That is essential in order to drive change in the organisation. Also, the numbers are important in order to find out what young people want, since they are actually "deciding" which content we should prioritise, and, importantly, not prioritise. To dare to live in the question "How can we make this story / idea / concept relevant for our target group" and make the choice based on new insights – not based on what has worked in the past.
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Useful links and contact information
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The webinar presentation can be downloaded here.
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The presenter, Janne Rygh can be reached on her e-mail-address janne.rygh@amedia.no
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Link to Amedia
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Links to Romerikes Blad och Halden Arbeiderblad
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You are welcome to contact the WAN-IFRA Innovate Local team, if you have questions or examples of similar cases.
Cecilia Campbell: c.campbell@wan-ifra.org
Niklas Jonason: n.jonason@wan-ifra.org