Ulrik Haagerup has been Head of News for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) since 2007, when he was lured away from the newspaper publishing house Nordjyske Media. As Editor-in-Chief of the daily newspaper, he had been largely responsible for transforming the company into an internationally renowned cross-media publishing house. The newsroom became a shining example of how to do convergence, and flocks of newspaper executives came from around the world to see Nordjyske in action. The volume of visitors reached the point that the company created a new revenue stream by charging an admission fee to watch its operations!

Trained as a television reporter, Haagerup has returned to his roots at DR, but with a multimedia resumé most can only envy. And DR News has indeed turned the corner since his arrival, making that always difficult transition to convergence.

“DR was pretty much inspired by what we had done at Nordjyske Media, in terms of multimedia transformation… They sort of cut and pasted that to their activities when they were trying to build a media house for TV, radio and online, which we called the DRC. And just after they moved in, I was asked to come lead the news operation (in 2007) and have been working there since. The idea has always been to change the culture in terms of always putting the story first and the platforms second… we set it up like a matrix where you have output and input. So instead of having five defining steps -- one for TV, one for radio, one for online, one for our 24-hour news channel, and one for current affairs -- we now have just one. And we just have one editor in charge of that. After four years, it has really started to work. Now, just the day before yesterday I was asked to take an even higher position to be in charge of current affairs and all news operations, basically in charge of about 600 people. That’s pretty cool.”

Ironically, Haagerup spent his first 18 years in the news business in print, part of that as Editor-in-Chief of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten. His rounded experience earned him membership in the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Journalism and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington, D.C. In 1990 he received the Danish equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, the Cavling.

Known to speak his mind, particularly on the subject of cultural change in news operations, Haagerup will share his always provocative and insightful views from the podium at the World Newspaper Congress in Vienna (13-15 October). Here is a taste of what’s to come…

WAN-IFRA: How can you compare what you have done at DR to what you were able to accomplish at Nordjyske?

HAAGERUP: The interesting thing is that the process is exactly the same, the tools are the same, the challenges are the same – which came actually as a surprise. This is a change process, so you really have to lead people in a different way. It’s not a cost-cutting process, but a journalistic quality process. ‘How can we, with the few resources we have, improve our journalism by working smarter, sharing ideas, sharing quotes and stories instead of keeping them for yourself?’

People are just as reluctant to change and afraid in an online environment as they are in a newspaper. We in our industry love to talk about challenges and progress, but we hate the change that follows. And we are very conservative people, but as the habits of our customers are changing so rapidly, especially the technology they use, we in the news business have to speed up the change process. It is extremely important that we ‘professionalise’ the way we lead people in this environment. We have to distance ourselves from an industrial way of seeing management … If you want to become an innovative company where there is a flow of ideas, a new way of thinking, and be a creative place to work, you have to lead people in a different way than you do in factories. And a lot of newsrooms all over the world have been led as factories. So we have to change all that, while at the same time we change the working culture of your staff, the work process, the technologies … that’s what makes it fun!

WAN-IFRA: If we go back to 2003, when you started thinking about and implementing change at Nordjyske, how did you feel you were equipped to lead that change, and how did you go about pursuing it within the company?

HAAGERUP: There is an endless array of great management books to read, seminars and training session to attend, but that was all too overwhelming for such a small brain as mine. I decided that I basically only understand one thing: In order to make change, you have to understand yourself and you have to communicate two pictures (to the company): One picture is, well, the Danish expression translates into ‘the toilet is on fire.’ In other words, we cannot go on doing what we are doing. If you cannot make people understand that things are not working and that you must change, you are doomed to failure.

And this is where the second picture is critical: you have to paint a picture of trust, to show a clear vision of how things can work better if we change. You have to be able to communicate that, otherwise, people will only see problems with change. Then it is all about going from Point A to Point B, from that toilet to what we want… and that is what we like to call ‘strategy’ and that is where you involve the people, empower them. It’s as simple as that.

In our business, it is pretty simple to get the picture of the toilet on fire. You can see the decline in circulation figures and advertising, the rise of Facebook, Google stealing advertising dollars. Of course, the problem for so many companies is coming up with that vision that says the new one will be better than the old one. I really believe that is not so much about working harder as it is about working smarter. Today, people can’t run any faster… you might could say they could 10 years ago, but today it’s not the case.

At Nordjyske, it was pretty simple: ‘Either we have to fire one-third of you or we have to make the cookie bigger.’ At DR, it was very similar: One week after we started, I was told we had to cut 23 percent of the staff. Then it’s pretty easy to say to the people, ‘the rest of us staying here, we have to enhance quality and we cannot produce less than we are producing now, so how the hell are we going to do that? Obviously, we have to change some things. Isn’t it stupid that we have five reporters calling the same politician to get the same quote? Why don’t we share that? We just need to organise another way.’

So one thing I am talking about to our people, and the same when I get invited to speak somewhere, is the blessing of crisis. In ancient Greek, ‘crisis’ actually means a turning point. They used to think that if you get a fever and it doesn’t subside within five days, you will probably die. If it gets better, you live. It’s a turning point. If you don’t panic, you can use a crisis to turn things around, as long as you can clearly explain where you want to go and how to get there.

In the newsroom, it’s very difficult to throw out old habits. And for so long, perhaps 10 to 15 years too long now, newspapers have been operating in that ink-on-paper mindset. Many missed ‘the runway,’ much like the music industry did, meaning recognising the incredible potential of distributing content online. They thought they were in the record business.

My favourite example is what Starbucks has done. They came to Denmark and tried to tell people how much better the coffee is at Starbucks. And actually, it’s not – it’s just more expensive. And how did they do that? They did it because they understood something that no other café chain in the world understood: ‘We are not in the coffee business serving people; we are in the people business serving coffee.’ That’s their concept. So many local newspapers feel they still have to distribute their papers seven days a week. Why? Why not only five days or three days… and then combine it with a glossy magazine or good website, etc.? But in order to do something like that, you have to change your own identity and how you view your business.

WAN-IFRA: What are some of the unique things that DR is doing to connect to its audience?

HAAGERUP:One of things that I am most interested in is the change in news criteria. I mean, ‘Why are we here and what is the purpose of news in society?’ My point is that we really have to dig deeper to see what people want. They have access to so much news that they are ready to vomit all over it! They are drowning in information pollution. So they don’t need more news – they need better news.

The second thing is … we as editors have been brought up to believe that a good story is a bad story. In many ways, you could say that for the last 25 years we (the industry) have applied the news criteria of the tabloid press. So that has spread from tabloid newspapers to online to quality newspapers.

Actually, there are four templates in which all journalists around the world tend to view the news. We angle a story on crooks, victims, drama or conflicts. The problem is that when you look at a newscast or the front page of a newspaper – and I am talking about journalism covering politics or business – we go after stories about things that do not work, report about the problems. So why do we do a story about bus companies in Denmark raising their prices and cutting down on service because people don’t take the bus anymore, when we have done that story a million times? However, it would be a great journalistic story to find one bus company in Denmark that has passengers, is making its route on time, and is making money. Do they exist? And if they exist, how the hell did they do that? That is good journalism. There is no drama, there are no victims, no crooks, and there’s no conflict.

One of my big goals is to put this type of news criteria on the radar in our company, in Denmark, and all over the world. Why not add this to our old news criteria? I call it constructive news, stories that are inspiring.

So we have to change, by changing our identity and changing the filters of the way we look at the world. And I am not talking about the press serving as a watchdog and not being critical. Of course we can be critical. Some people say to me, ‘Are you talking about positive stories like the clouds and the sun, blah, blah…’ No, I am not talking about that. Again, news stories can inspire and help the democratic debate. Another example: We have a big debate here now about early retirement, and people are afraid their basic welfare benefits will be taken away from them. Of course we normally talk to these people who are pissed off and we can do that, but a better story would be to look around the world to see if there are good examples of countries in similar situations and they did something else that worked. That can inspire this national debate in our country. So we go to Finland to see how they made their early retirement plan work. How did they persuade their unions to do that? And that will qualify as an excellent debate in our country.

The idea is that in any newscast during the day or night, on TV, radio, online… at least one story should be a constructive one.

And that has nothing to do with organisational structure or media convergence – it has to do with your identity. Looking in the mirror.

WAN-IFRA: Coming from print and now with TV, what potential do you see for newspapers in the next years getting more involved with TV, web TV, etc.?

HAAGERUP: I think any media company, print or not print, has to realise that you must be unique. Either you are cheaper or you are better. And if you are not cheaper – because nobody will pay for regular news on the web – then you have to come up with something else. You have to be better at something. The financial model for mass media is going down the drain.

There are really only four ways to finance your digital activities: Either they pay with subscriptions directly, or indirectly – and people don’t want to do that for now. Secondly is through advertising. The problem is advertisers go where the traffic is and all the traffic is on Facebook and Google and they steal the traffic and the advertising. Google in Denmark has become the biggest advertising medium, bigger than TV, in just two years. Facebook will probably be the same in a couple of years. And they are spending no money on hiring independent journalists in Denmark as the newspapers did, which is a huge democratic problem.

Then you have only two ways left to finance it. One is finding a very rich guy to finance it, philanthropy. And the last one is forcing everybody to pay a little so everybody can get a lot, which is a license fee model such as a lot of the public-service companies use, like the BBC and DR, to finance their activities. And the Americans will call that (bleep bleep) socialism because ‘it will be government controlled and blah, blah, blah…’ I agree that the government shouldn’t interfere, but people must understand how important such companies are to democracy.

This is all at the heart of the crisis for news journalism: the financial models are eroding. I think you only have one chance: to produce something that means a lot to fewer people so you can charge a higher price, assuming you are in the commercial market.

WAN-IFRA: So how do you view some of the paid attempts so far?

HAAGERUP: Well, people have to try something. But I think you have to understand why these things are happening. The best way to look at it is to look at pornography, which sounds provocative and controversial, but that industry has always been the fastest to adopt and invest in new media technology, from the French postcard to the VHS recorder, which the porn industry pushed for and then it got widespread use. Porn was the reason that satellite television got into homes because Dad wanted to watch porn at night and not tell Mom. But it was also the porn industry that had no success in making money with content on the web, using Flash technology and all that. And the problem is that the traditional porn industry is not making money anymore. Why? Because everybody can produce their own stuff. Their iPhone, filming, stealing, etc…. they just film it and put it out there on free websites. So unless you produce something called ‘quality porn,’ whatever that is, that is so much better than what you get for free, nobody will pay for it.

Does that sound familiar? My whole point is that you really have to go into niches and enhance your quality. I think a publication like The Economist can still be successful because their content is excellent and you can’t get it elsewhere.