Across the Nordic region trust in professional news remains among the highest in the world, particularly in public service media and established legacy outlets. At the same time, journalism is facing a fundamental shift in economic conditions.
The report Nordic News Media Landscape 2025, compiled and written by a project team at Nordicom, shows that news organisations now face competition not only from national actors, but also from global platforms, which has made it harder to attract both audiences and advertisers.
“Digitalisation and globalisation have fundamentally altered the conditions for producing, distributing, and consuming news. These shifts make shared, empirically grounded knowledge more important than ever”, says Jonas Ohlsson, director of Nordicom and one of the authors of the report.
A changing Nordic news landscape
Media policy continues to be a cornerstone of the Nordic news media model. Strong public service broadcasters, combined with direct subsidies to private media and reduced VAT on news subscriptions, reflect a shared political understanding of news journalism as a public good – even though national policy solutions differ considerably across the region.
“The Nordic countries stand out for their high levels of trust in news, especially in public service media and established outlets. Public broadcasters top European trust rankings, and the people are also more willing than anywhere else in Europe to pay for online news, particularly in Norway and Sweden”, says Tobias Lindberg, media researcher and one of the authors of the report.
At the same time, the report points to the gradual emergence of a more integrated Nordic news market. Cross-border ownership and corporate consolidation have increased over the past decade, driven by the need for scale in digital competition and subscription-based business models. Despite this development, the largest commercial news media companies remain Nordic-owned and financially solid in international comparison.
Overall, the report concludes that Nordic news media systems combine resilience and vulnerability. High trust, supportive policy frameworks, and strong audience engagement provide a solid foundation, but long-term sustainability remains challenged by economic pressure, shifting advertising markets, and changing patterns of news use.