Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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B Company case study: Sanoma 
INTRODUCTION 
Sanoma is a major publisher of newspapers in Finland. It controls a third of the total 
newspaper circulation and it is also active in other media (it owns a television channel as well 
as the biggest publishing house in Finland). In addition to its home base it is also active in 
different media sectors, including the newspaper publishing sector, a number of other 
European countries.
Finland, like all Scandinavian countries, is a country with a strong reading culture and a high 
newspaper readership density. At the same time, as the home country of Nokia, it is an early 
adopter of new technologies and is among the countries with the highest penetration levels of 
broadband and mobile internet (Nieminen, 2010). It is therefore interesting to see how this 
newspaper publishing company, whose homebase is in one of Europe’s most advanced digital 
countries, has responded to the changing market conditions as a result of internet and 
digitization. Sanoma took over the best visited, internet-only news website in the Netherlands: 
NU.nl. NU.nl has been at the forefront of innovations in online news offerings, including a 
very successful user generated news section. This service will be discussed in a bit more 
detail in this case study, as an example of a successful online news provider. 
HISTORY 
Sanoma Corporation was founded in 1860 as a textbook publisher. The name ‘Sanoma’ 
comes from the Finnish ‘Sanomat’ meaning Messages. Sanoma has a long history of 
acquisitions and mergers and of launching and divesting activities. Sanoma Corporation 
started to expand its news publishing activities in 1890 when newspaper Päivälehti, now 
known as newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, became part of the company.
A second big expansion took place in 1910 when Sanoma Corporation together with WSOY 
and a group of other companies founded Rautakirja, a company that sold books and 
newspapers at Finnish railway stations. In 1920 there were more than twenty Rautakirja 
kiosks, in 1971 Rautakirja opened its 500
th
R-kiosk.
Business was going very well for Sanoma Corporation during the 20
th
century. The circulation 
of the newspaper Viikkoliite (the first illustrated newspaper) had grown up to 100,000 on 
Sundays. Weekday circulation of the newspaper stood at close to 82,000. In 1954 the 
newspaper became the largest Nordic region subscription-based newspaper with more than 
230,000 copies on weekdays. In the context of these newspaper successes, Sanoma 
Corporation founded the Sanoma School of Journalism in 1967 to train future reporters and 
build professional skills.
During the last years of the 20
th
century, Sanoma Corporation owned its own printing facility 
where color advertisements (instead of the previous black and white) and editorial pictures 
were printed. The joint venture between the two Finnish companies Sanoma en WSOY in 
1999 was the starting point of the Sanoma Media Group. While Sanoma’s print activities 
went well, Sanoma corporation once again started to extend its activities by taking interests in 
television and internet activities next to the acquisition of companies like the regional 
newspaper publisher and printer Kymen Lehtimedia and the Dutch VNU magazine publisher 
in 2001.
In 1996, Sanoma launched the first online version of the newspaper the Helsingin Sanomat. 
The company’s focus switched slowly from print towards more and more digital activities. 

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