Editor’s note: we are reviving Toolbox, a series on digital tools used by news publishers. The goal is to help managers pick the most appropriate tools for themselves by speaking with media practitioners. In the previous two editions back in 2020 we looked at Dennik SME and elDiario.es. For this edition we spoke with Danish outlet Zetland, which relies on external tools but has also developed its own tech tools, including Good Tape service for audio transcription.

Zetland was born out of a need to insert more clarity in the chaos of the fast-paced news cycle. With information overload, news was losing its impact and relevance. To counter this, this Danish media organisation decided to be the solution to making journalism more beneficial and integral for society.

BACKGROUND

Publication	Zetland
Type	Long-form and in-depth news
Country (population)	Denmark (5.9 million)
Readership (MAU)	~40,000+
No. of paying members	Same as readership
History and presence	Four journalists in legacy news media realised that the constant influx of news was weakening readers’ interest and harming democracy. Hakon Mosbech, Silke Bock, Jakob Moll and Lea Korsgaard decided to quit their jobs in legacy media. They decided to focus on how they could make news more solution-oriented and integral for society. With this goal, Zetland began its journey in 2012 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They started by sharing long-form stories with their subscribers via monthly newsletters. Along with their reportage, Zetland would also perform live journalism events in the city. In 2016, Zetland changed into a daily digital newspaper which would produce a few stories every day.

[For the complete list of the tools with pricing and links scroll to the end of this article]

Zetland is an interesting example to focus on as it does many things that are different from traditional media. They are the new generation of news. Their prime focus is their members. The organisation relies on its members and has launched several innovations in order to help better their user experience.

Given Zetland’s focus on its members, most of its product team has geared towards creating a unique user experience for its paying audience. The Fix spoke to Zetland’s Head of Product and Growth Sebastian Winther to understand how it had upped its service of satisfying its community of readers.

Innovations

Zetland’s sole focus on its members’ needs has rewarded them with more paying subscribers. Zetland initially tried to grow with marketing itself in ads on TV and in newspapers. When this marketing strategy didn’t work, they went to their members and asked them to support Zetland, which was then struggling financially. Within a month, their audience helped them grow organically and their membership rose by 25% in a month.

In 2017, Zetland’s readers suggested they would like to have an option to listen to the stories. Zetland fulfilled the demand and added the audio option. They even provided the possibility to switch between audio and text seamlessly halfway through the story. This helped the organisation fit better into the reader’s lifestyle. As Winther mentioned, “articles are like products that our members want. The result is an article that easily plugs into their everyday lives without much resistance.”

On the members’ suggestion, Zetland developed an app where the members could access all their stories. They even introduced a morning news overview of the last 24 hours, based on what the readers wanted. On the suggestion of a member, they changed their recording from MP3 to Opus which helped them become 35% greener.

Zetland is in the middle of making changes to its app to make the user onboarding process easier. They also want to customise the features available on the app so that it shows the readers what they like and notifies them when there’s a new story.

In 2018, they won the Gold Medal for their custom-built publishing platform and in 2020, they won the European Digital Media Award for their app.

Startup within a startup

Zetland’s Jakob Steinn was tinkering with Whisper, OpenAI’s model, when he stumbled upon gold. The team of journalists at Zetland were finding poor results with transcription tools as many of the available tools were not catered towards Danish, a small language market. When Steinn then presented his idea of a Danish transcription tool at one of Zetland’s morning meetings, the team knew it was important and decided to dedicate more manpower to developing it.

Once the beta version of the current Good Tape was created, the team put it out on Twitter. Other Danish media started showing tremendous interest in the software, and Zetland decided to make a business out of it. It was a product developed at Zetland but now Good Tape is its own separate entity with its own leadership and team managing its operations. As Winther puts it, “it’s a startup within a startup.”

AI approach

The team at Zetland is pro-innovation and technology. Since their journalistic output is far more complex than what AI could do, they don’t see AI as a threat. They don’t shy away from using AI to generate ideas and test their hypotheses. Winther says, “We play around with OpenAI[‘s tools] and with ChatGPT to see what makes sense for us. But we use it more as an internal tool for sparing. We use it to generate ideas or find mistakes and to help code.”

External tools

Type	Tool / App	Description	Pricing per month
Analytics	PostHog	PostHog is an open-source product analytics tool.	Free for core functionalities, different prices for each of their products
AI / Generative tool	ChatGPT	OpenAI’s ChatGPT is an AI tool that produces human-like text and can help analyse, create and explain content.	Free plan for basic version$20 plan for a paid version that gives access to GPT-4 and other advanced functionality$25 plan for teams
Communication	Slack	Slack is the collaboration hub that brings the right people, information, and tools together to get their work done.	Free plan with limited featuresBasic plan starts from $7.25 / user / month
Workflow / Project Management	Notion	Notion is a collaborative platform for note-taking and task management.	Free plan for basic version$9.50 for Plus$17 for Business (different charges if billed annually)
CMS	In-built	Zetland custom built a CMS platform to have more control over the flow of their articles and to be able to support connection between their text and audio stories	–
Subscription	Chargebee	Chargebee helps manage subscription service and recurring billing.	Free for the starter pack$599 for the Performance pack
Web Design Tools	Custom built on React	React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It allows UI elements to be displayed on websites and app	Free
Newsletter	Mailchimp*	ESP. Marketing automation platform and email marketing service.	Free for the starter pack$13 for the Essential pack$20 for the Standard pack$350 for the Premium pack
Audio	Opus	Opus is an audio codec. It performs better than MP3 and Vorbis.	Free for the starter pack$9 for the Starter pack$29 for the Pro pack

*Winther wouldn’t recommend it for others. “It works but it is too expensive for what we are getting.” He would rather pay that money for something more flexible.

Toolbox #3: Zetland

Priyal Shah

The Danish publisher’s product development and external digital tools

Author

Priyal Shah

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