Technology, labour and the rise of a financial newspaper – the early years of Dagens Industri

Abstract

The financial newspaper, Dagens Industri, published by the Swedish media conglomerate the Bonnier Group, was not only the first successful financial newspaper in Sweden but also one of few newspapers that managed to internationalise. In this paper, it is argued that the survival and success of Dagens Industri could be attributed to the production model that the paper was made to adopt in order to cope with the special technological and labour market-related circumstances that were present at the time of its creation. This includes the outsourcing of composition and printing, something that allowed the paper to stay out of the labour conflicts that rocked the media industry at the time. It is also shown that, because of the differences in the structure of the labour movement, the challenges met, and the solutions used by the Bonnier Group, differed significantly from those of American newspaper companies.