Alma Media Corporation and five other Finnish newspaper publishers to establish Lännen Media

Helsinki, Finland, 24-6-2014 — /EuropaWire/ — Alma Media Corporation and five other Finnish newspaper publishers have signed a partnership agreement to establish Lännen Media. Lännen Media Oy will produce content for 12 regional newspapers in western and northern Finland.

The newspapers participating in Lännen Media will establish a joint national editorial team by the end of 2014 to produce content for printed newspapers as well as their digital, online and mobile channels. The joint editorial team will produce national content on domestic and international news, background articles on current events, weekend materials, daily theme pages and national online news. Lännen Media will have no effect on the business operations of the participating newspapers or the position of their respective Editors-in-Chief.

The Lännen Media newsroom will start operating on 1 October 2014.  Full-scale operations will start by the beginning of 2015. The Lännen Media editorial team will be formed by 40 journalists from the participating newspapers.

Editor-in-Chief Matti Posio will lead the collaboration from Tampere while dividing his time between the Lännen Media newspapers. The Lännen Media newsroom will have journalists in Helsinki and 12 media companies across an area stretching from Turku to Lapland. The head of the newsroom will be Veikko Valtonen, Managing Editor at Turun Sanomat. Lännen Media’s producer for weekend and supplement pages will be based in Oulu, while the theme content producer will be based in Seinäjoki.

“Lännen Media will produce content for the participating newspapers while also playing an important role in their journalistic product development. The newspapers that make up Lännen Media are the leading media in their respective regions. Combining the leading forces in the field ensures that their readers will be provided even higher quality national and international content, while also giving the newspapers the opportunity to focus more on producing local content”, says Matti Posio, Editor-in-Chief of Lännen Media.

“Finland is sometimes called a country where there is a single truth. At the national level, we want to offer another truth. An alternative. Freedom of speech will be the winner here. The quality standards are very high in a collaboration of 12 such significant newspapers.”

The founding newspapers of Lännen Media include the Alma Media newspapers Aamulehti (Tampere), Satakunnan Kansa (Pori), Lapin Kansa (Rovaniemi), Kainuun Sanomat (Kajaani) and Pohjolan Sanomat (Kemi), the Ilkka-Yhtymä newspapers Ilkka (Seinäjoki) and Pohjalainen (Vaasa), Hämeen Sanomat (Hämeenlinna) and its affiliate Forssan Lehti (Forssa), Turun Sanomat (Turku), Kaleva (Oulu) and Keskipohjanmaa (Kokkola).

The total reach of the Lännen Media newspapers is nearly two million (1,980,000) Finns. The aggregate circulation of the printed newspapers is 516,375 (2013) and the number of readers 1.28 million.

The newspapers participating in Lännen Media signed a memorandum of understanding on expanding their journalistic collaboration in February. Deeper and more extensive collaboration is a logical next step to follow the mutual journalistic cooperation that has been going on for a long time. One of the most important objectives of Lännen Media will also be to expedite the product development of digital content.

For more information, please contact:
Matti Posio, Editor-in-Chief, Lännen Media, tel. +358 (0)40 771 7828, matti.posio@almamedia.fi
Alma Media in brief

Alma Media is a media company focusing on digital services and publishing. In addition to news services, the company’s products provide useful information related to lifestyle, career and business development. The services of Alma Media have expanded from Finland to the Nordic countries, the Baltics and Central Europe. The company employs 1,965 professionals (excluding distributors), of whom approximately one third work outside Finland. Alma Media’s revenue in 2013 totalled approximately MEUR 300. Alma Media’s share is listed on NASDAQ OMX Helsinki. Read more at www.almamedia.com.