Sydsvenskan Best Again

Photo: Lars Dareberg

Sydsvenskan and its staff have been literally inundated with awards and accolades throughout the past twelve months. Here are some examples:

• Jens Mikkelsen and Johan Wessman won the 2008 Stora Journalistpriset, Sweden's most prestigious award for journalistic excellence, for their investigation of Sweden's leading cooperative housing association, HSB, and won a second major prize, the Guldspaden, for the same story.
• Katia Wagner won the Wendela prize for best social affairs piece for her book, The Alexandra Man.
• Natalie Nasr won the Swedish Childhood Cancer Foundation's journalism prize for her article, "The Patient in Close-up."
• Johan Bävman, Ingemar D. Kristiansen and Lars Dareberg shared first prize for the year's best photograph.
• Johan Bävman also came second in the world's most prestigious photography competition, World Press Photo, and received an honorable mention in the Picture of the Year category.
• Karen Söderberg won Lukas Bonnier's Journalism Award for her decades of work as a respected reporter, editor and head editor, and for her efforts to develop journalism across various media with passion, focus and her own individual style of writing.
• Christina Gustafson was named regional newspaper editor of the year.
• Several Sydsvenskan staff members have also won various design prizes, including Benjamin Peetré and Petra Villani who took first prize in the Swedish Design awards.
• And just a few weeks ago, Sydsvenskan was at it again. The paper won Newspaper of the Year, awarded by the Swedish media magazine, Medievärlden, with the following citation: "Newspaper of the Year 2009 goes to the newspaper that does just about everything right, from the weightiest political commentary to the briefest Twitter post." Sydsvenskan also won Editor of the Year.

Daniel Sandström, editor-in-chief at Sydsvenskan, how do you keep winning prize after prize? What are you doing that others are not?

"There are a number of things. It's partly due to our focus on quality and our ingrained tradition of cultivating talent for the long term. Many key positions are held by people who have been here more or less all their lives. We have an atmosphere that encourages talented and gifted people — something that has always been the case at Sydsvenskan.

"When I took over as editor last year, we had already started a project called New Sydsvenskan that covered both working practices and content, and this is starting to bear fruit now. We realized that the print version of the paper should not only cover what happened yesterday, but that we needed to provide deeper coverage and analysis in an entirely different way. It was a tough challenge that meant, among other things, that 50 people had to change jobs within the company. March 7 was the magical date, when we made the switch on all our channels: print, web and mobile. And results since then have measured up to our forecasts. We have also conducted surveys that show the paper enjoys a stronger readership among younger people than before."

How important are the prizes for you?

"The Swedish football coach, Lars Lagerbäck, says that you have to learn to win (this was before losing one — zero to Denmark in a recent World Cup qualifier). And that's a pretty good way of looking at it. Our work ethic at Sydsvenskan means we want to be best, but the prizes are not an end in themselves, they are just a way of reaching our goal: Improving the paper for our readers. Our vision is to produce the newspaper of the future in all media. In the newspaper business, it's easy to be nostalgic, but we focus on the possibilities offered by digital technologies. We constantly preserve our roots in quality journalism and try new ideas and ground-breaking activities."

Sydsvenskan's staff seem to agree that high ambitions play a crucial role in the newpaper's success.

"We have steadily increased the demands we put on ourselves," says Andreas Ekström, who works on the paper's culture section. "Good enough is not really good enough any more. And I think you can see this across the board here. I find myself thinking time and time again: 'Wow! Look how good he or she has gotten!' We've excelled in so many areas. I don't think I've ever been as proud as I am now to be part of this paper."

"I think we've been good at deciding what we want to do, which makes everything so much easier to accomplish," says the paper's sports editor, Anja Gatu. I also think Sydsvenskan is the opposite of more reserved, uncertain publications - we dare to believe in our ideas and go our own way. The sky is the limit here, which makes work enjoyable. And when it's fun to work, it's easy to do well. It sounds like a cliché, but that's the best way to describe it."

Perhaps it is Rakel Chukri, the paper's cultural editor, who describes it best:

"We have a good mix of stability and madness."