Arotin Hartounian, 2018
There have been two worrying trends developing over the last decade or so. The first is that newspapers and journalistic organizations have continuous financial challenges as the landscape and habits of media consumption are changing rapidly due to digitalization. The second trend that is far more worrying is that the trust and stability of democracies all over the world are on a constant decline. For democracies to stay healthy, there must be easy access to accurate information and engagement and participation among the citizens. Journalistic institutions and outlets struggle to stay afloat as businesses these two trends compound and accelerate. All journalistic outlets must now adapt and innovate rapidly to survive and evolve to operate in this new paradigm.
This project focuses on the efforts and vision of one news organization, Dagens Næringsliv (DN), as they look to adapt and innovate. Through the use of SOD methodologies and practice, a systematic scope of the organization and the general landscape of the situation is explored. Understanding the vision, mission, and efforts of DN for the future and mapping them in a systematic diagram helps their connection and contribution to democracy become more apparent. A strategy or synergy map is one of the major outcomes of this project. This strategy map is a visual roadmap to a wide network of opportunities for combining projects and efforts to discover innovations in the engagement of the readers of DN, prospective subscribers, and the general public. Several new concepts for reader engagement projects and digital products are also proposed in this project.