‘The article as we know it is gone’: Norway’s VG charts a radical AI-accelerated future

"I spend most of my time thinking about how to steer organisations through the coming years of uncertainty," said Gard Steiro.

"The only thing that's certain is that leading a newsroom will not get easier in the years ahead. Visibility is poor, and we must navigate through a thick fog," he said.

As Editor-in-Chief and CEO of Verdens Gang (VG), Norway's leading digital media house and a Schibsted-owned tabloid newspaper, Steiro has a front-row seat to the ongoing industry transformation.

Amid the uncertainty, he said one thing is clear: the digital distribution channels that publishers have largely relied on are rapidly shifting. "The internet as we know it is changing, Maybe it's on life support. The no-click search future is already here."

Speaking at our Newsroom Summit in Copenhagen, Steiro said that VG is, in principle, well-placed to face this uncertain future. Over the last few years, the publisher has grown into a broad media house with a wide range of content types and audiences.

Moreover, VG has a tradition of "being innovative and optimistic about technology," he said, which has provided them with valuable lessons from past successes - as well as failures. For instance, although VG's "fancy and really expensive" iPad app failed to engage audiences, it ended up playing a key role in defining its digital subscriptions journey.

Read more: Lessons from a failed app are helping Norway's VG reach young readers

'It would be unwise to keep working as before'

Steiro said that VG's 400,000-plus digital subscriber base has helped it reach an envious breakthrough: "We no longer have to rely on print revenues to finance the newsroom or journalism," he said. "We could shut down the printed edition tomorrow without firing a single reporter."

But he warned of risks that come with such success: "With these numbers, my fear is that we might start believing we've reached the top of the mountain. And if we believe that, we will become fat and lazy."

VG was successful in its previous transitions, from print to digital and into the smartphone era. But it must now prepare for a new change, he said.

"The digital VG, with its two million daily users, is a kind of print newspaper: our users are aging, we cannot recruit enough new readers, and everything suggests we are on our way" into another transition period driven by AI disruption.

In these circumstances, "it would be unwise to keep working as before," Steiro said.

'Modern media must work more like startups'

Consequently, VG restructured its operations earlier this year based on four guiding principles:

• Increased flexibilityto adapt to new technology and trends
• Faster innovationand development in the newsroom
• Reduced costthanks to fewer roles and clearer decision-making
• Reduced complexityin general.

"We had to become a more agile company. Speed is the most important thing for us now," alongside a focus on young readers, Steiro said.

A major goal was to transition from a silo-based model to one where specialist roles have bigger roles in the newsroom, and cross-functional teams are more regularly used. "The problems we must solve in the future for our audience do not follow the organisational chart (of the past)," Steiro said.

He added that VG is also working to "renew and adjust" its company culture. Methods for this include daily all-hands meetings, which not only involve journalists but the whole organisation, featuring discussions on journalism ethics, product development and actual business.

"Modern media must work more like startups in my opinion. Everyone must take part, everyone must understand what drives growth, and everybody must understand the users," Steiro said.

Another tactic they use to accelerate culture change and learning is rotation: for example, experienced reporters may get placed in the audience team, where they learn about engaging distinct audiences through different channels.

Other focus areas for VG include creating a more personalised news product, strengthening their audio and video offering, and improving the dynamic paywall.

However, all this work "is still conservative. It's incremental," Steiro said.

"Is that enough? No."

Building 'a totally new VG'

Thanks to some cost-cutting last year, VG has been able to invest in "more radical" projects as well, Steiro said.

A major one is "VGX," which Steiro called "a totally new VG" - a reinvention of their news product. VGX was created by a small team working autonomously, to avoid the influence of "the established truths that exist in every newsroom," Steiro said.

For fresh inspiration, the team interviewed many young people who knew VG but weren't readers, and recruited 700 of them as beta users to help in crafting the new product.

Steiro gave an overview of the main features that the product team has developed for VGX, which is currently in the beta phase.

"The article as we know it is gone. So are pre-rolls and click-to-play. They of course got rid of all clickbait. And the front page is gone."

"One feed gives you the overview, the second layer goes in-depth. They are not articles but a completely new news experience. And AI is not added on the top, it's built into the core."

"Will this work? Probably not. Have we built a killer app that solves all problems? Definitely not."

But the key point is that the project has been a learning opportunity, and many of its features could end up being integrated into VG itself.

The project also gave VG a clearer understanding of what young readers expect from news products, and how the company can adapt workflows to meet the needs of the newsroom of the future, particularly through automation.

"A great deal of journalism will be automated," Steiro said.

"If we don't do it, others will. And they will take our role in society."

WAN-IFRA's Newsroom Summit 2025 brought newsroom leaders together to network and share best practices at JP/Politiken in Copenhagen.

AI in the service of 'unique content'

Steiro said that VGX relies on a workflow where content is pulled in from other publications within Schibsted Media and broken down into "journalistic atoms."

AI agents then act as "reporters, editors and editors-in-chief," assembling the content into new formats.

Remarkably, the whole process is overseen by a single person: one reporter directs the agents that work on VGX's content.

"The art now is to versionise the content we already have," Steiro said. "And that requires AI."

One of the tools built for VGX can create videos just based on articles with text and images. It has been built into the company's CMS and is already available to Aftonbladet, another Schibsted publication based in Stockholm.

Read more: How Schibsted is using AI to boost efficiency for their newsrooms and their readers

Steiro concluded by emphasising what drives VG's AI strategy: "Everybody can build AI tools, that's not so difficult. The difficult thing is to improve the unique content," such as investigations, "but above all, being present where readers cannot go."

"We try to use AI to free resources to do more of this stuff. That is what motivates me and that's what motivates the organisation," he said.

"We must never forget who we exist for. Of course it's our readers, but also the people we write about. Those who need to be seen, those who have a story to be told, and those who need a voice."

Teemu Henriksson

Research Editor

[email protected]