Finnish financial daily Taloussanomat to concentrate on electronic services

Juha-Pekka Raeste

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The financial daily Taloussanomat, which is part of the publicly traded SanomaWSOY Group, will cease the print publication and concentrate all its resources on electronic services from the end of the current year.
      Taloussanomat has been showing a loss over the entire ten years of its history. Now the objective is to build a business that will be Finland’s leading provider of electronic financial services.
      Juha-Pekka Raeste, 45, has been appointed Editor-in-Chief and President of Taloussanomat as of 12th November. At present Raeste works as a financial journalist with Helsingin Sanomat.
      Mikael Pentikäinen, the President of Sanoma, the newspaper division of SanomaWSOY, says that a substantial change is taking place in the market for financial data, while information is increasingly sought from electronic services. Both readers and advertisers have clearly shifted more to the Internet.
     
”The increase in the on-line advertising of Taloussanomat has been some 70 per cent this year”, reports Pentikäinen.
      In peak periods, the online services of Taloussanomat (taloussanomat.fi, digitoday.fi, and itviikko.fi) have had well over 300,000 individual weekly visitors. The publication’s electronic services also include the news agency Startel.
      At present approximately one-fourth of the advertising revenues of Taloussanomat come from the Internet.
     
The removal of printing and distribution costs will improve the publication’s financial position; the aggregate losses over its ten-year life span amount to tens of millions of euros.
     
At present, it does not appear that the reorganisation would lead to staff lay-offs, as most of the current personnel of 57 will be needed in electronic operations and some can be employed in other Sanoma units. However, if suitable positions do not exist, other solutions will be sought, Pentikäinen concluded.
      "It is good that no one will be dismissed, while it is also good that a decision has been made, as the past few weeks have been rather intolerable, with everybody having a hunch that something will happen soon", commented Ismo Virta, the chief shop steward of the Taloussanomat staff.
      Ten days ago, Kauppalehti, part of the Alma Media Corporation and a rival to Taloussanomat; announced its decision to discontinue its weekend Presso magazine, and to develop the content and marketing of the kauppalehti.fi online service.


Links:
  SanomaWSOY news release 6.11.2007: Taloussanomat to Concentrate on Electronic Services - Juha-Pekka Raeste appointed Editor-in-Chief and President of Taloussanomat

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