New Time changes editor

Editor probate. – My point is that we live in an international society, and I am not so concerned with the nation of Norway as such. I am far more in agreement with the values ​​from Sigurd Evensmo and the circle around Orientering, and what later became New Time. When I took over Morgenbladet in 1993, I defined myself as an anarchist, with the liberal and socialist values ​​that lie in anarchism. As editor of Ny Tid, I will probably emphasize the cultural radical rather than the left-wing radical.

That's what the incoming New Time editor says Truls Lie to New Time. On Monday, he said something similar Klassekampen, where the news became known right after it was spread on Ny Tids twitter account. In the spring of 1993, Truls Lie bought Morgenbladet from FRP Hroar ​​Hansen and started an international newspaper project. In 2003, he sold it to Fritt Ord, before he started the Nordic edition of Le Monde diplomatique – which he also has let other forces drive on.

From 1 February, Lie takes over as new editor-in-chief and general manager in New time & Orientering AS, which publishes power-critical and independent Ny Tid – the only left-wing weekly newspaper left in Norway. At the same time, Lie has bought 34 percent of the shares in the company from outgoing editor Dag Herbjørnsrud (44), so that no one now has more than 35 percent in NTO AS. The author Erland Kiøsterud is among those who want to join Lie to lift the 63-year-old newspaper tradition further, which will be discussed at the extraordinary general meeting on 28 January.

In mid-November, managing editor Dag Herbjørnsrud (44), who also owned 68 percent of the shares, announced the position of editor in charge and general manager, almost ten years after he first took over the job. At the same time, Herbjørnsrud also sold its majority share for sale. It happens exactly one year after he took over the responsibility for the newspaper in November 2013, after a tearful and very media-controversial dispute with the previous owners. The battle had its origin in the struggle for editorial freedom of the press after previous owners tried to influence the content.

- Lie best applicant

After a long process with several strong applicants, he and a unanimous board (with board chairman Joakim Bakke-Nielsen, Rolf Reikvam, Anita Chawla and Herbjørnsrud) gathered around what can now be said to be possibly the most experienced niche newspaper editor in Norway: Truls Olaf Lie. Despite reminders, Ny Tid's journalist has not succeeded in getting a longer interview with editor Herbjørnsrud, but in Klassekampen on 19 January it said:

«Outgoing editor Dag Herbjørnsrud is clearly proud that the experienced pressman Truls Lie has agreed to take over the baton. – We had many good applicants, but there is no doubt that Truls Lie was the best candidate. With its versatile experience and with its enormous network of contacts, Ny Tids future as a radical and international weekly newspaper will be in the best hands, says Herbjørnsrud. "

For the past six years, Lie has worked with documentary film production and been the editor of the international documentary magazine Dox Magazine. Before that, the philosophy-educated computer expert was the editor-in-chief of Morgenbladet (1993-2003) and the Nordic edition of Le Monde Diplomatique (2003-2007). Now he is ready for action for the global radical weekly newspaper Ny Tid. Lie wants to strengthen the international profile of the weekly newspaper, which in 2015 has the 40th anniversary of the name change from Orientering to New Time.

- I will go a little sharper into the issues concerning intelligence and new control regimes. These are topics that I have also been interested in in philosophy, and which have gained renewed relevance with the Snowden revelations. We have also applied to Fritt Ord for project funding to strengthen journalism in this area. We want to go broadly into the three big Ks that characterize our time: control, climate and conflict, Lie told Klassekampen.

He also wants to translate more content from international news channels as well as an increased effort online.

300 "likes"

Ny Tid gets hold of the newspaper's new editor when he comes straight from one weekend supplement interview with Aftenposten:

- On Monday, it became official that you will be Ny Tids' next editor. How have the reactions been?

- They have been very positive. Has received 300 likes on the news on Facebook and over 80 comments, as well as several people who have expressed their interest in writing in the newspaper. There is particular interest in this with the three Ks – climate, conflict and control – people notice, Lie answers.

- Yes, can you explain a little more what you put in these three K-words?

- These are the fields I want us to concentrate on when it comes to investigative journalism in the future. When it comes to conflict, I think of everything that has to do with peace settlement, war and abuse of power, alternative ways of resolving conflicts. Counterforce and revelation of power are an important part of Ny Tid's historical line. When it comes to control, I am very critical of the new control society and the so-called war on terror, which I believe spreads unnecessary fear in the population and creates a new mental regime where heads of state and others gain too much power.

- Even though there is a lot of terror in the world?

- It is true that there is terror in the world, but there is not much terror in the world. Just look at how three people (in Paris, editor's note), and the media coverage that follows, during this week have dominated the Norwegian public. I want to provide an alternative to all this.

- What about the latest K, climate?

- The climate part is for me about how we can take better care of the planet and the depletion and over-consumption that we experience and allow today. Not only on behalf of nature, but also to ask questions about what quality of life is for us humans. I also want positive angles to consumers who ask questions about what is a good and sustainable life. Here, there are a number of movements in Norway and internationally that work with exciting alternative ways of living.

- What is the potential of New Time as you see it?

- I want the newspaper to be an important weekly newspaper in the space between Klassekampen and Morgenbladet. Where Dagens Næringsliv-owned Morgenbladet has become a more value-liberal academic newspaper and Klassekampen has a more popular and national profile, I want Ny Tid to be an internationally reflective newspaper. In many ways a third way in this newspaper landscape. If we manage that, I think circulation can be greatly increased.

- How important is this circulation?

- The circulation will never be large for a niche newspaper. Their task is to be a thinking and reflecting space, such will always only be interesting for a small part of society. In addition, it is important to engage the rising generations in critical reflection, Lie answers.

Best on documentary

- You describe yourself as an internationally oriented person, and to Klassekampen you therefore stated that the nation state of Norway is not as important as such. What do you put in it?

- What I meant was probably that Norway is not so important enclosed in itself. A kind of "Festung Norwegen" limits and excludes interesting people from entering the country. My and the newspaper's long interest is a Norway in the world, how Norway behaves internationally. At the same time, I think it is especially important for Ny Tid to appreciate Norwegians who, due to their multicultural background, have an international perspective. I therefore especially want to connect with writers who have one leg in Norway and one outside.

- You now come from work with documentaries. What do you want to bring with you from the world of documentary filmmaking to newspaper production?

- Specifically, I am sitting on a lot of unpublished material that I want to publish through Ny Tid. I have 15 film interviews with exciting people in the Middle East who are fighting for freedom in the aftermath of the Arab Spring and Winter. In addition, I also want to cover international documentaries widely in the newspaper and online. That is where we will be the best, Lie concludes.

The reason for Lie taking over is also that in 2015 it is ten years since Herbjørnsrud in the spring of 2005 was taken from Aftenposten to take over Ny Tid, which was then on the verge of bankruptcy. At the takeover in the summer of 2005, Herbjørnsrud had to borrow NOK 35.000 from the newspaper to pay salaries to the employees. We get Herbjørnsrud for a comment:

- I have probably lost a few hundred thousand myself in keeping alive the power-critical New Time project this decade. Especially the battles against the editorial staff's opponents, who have tried to coup the newspaper or spread untruths against it, have cost. But so far it has been worth it – it's about important media principles, and about ideas from the 1950s that should not die. The revelations we have had about everything from arms sales, to Maria Amelie Envoy and for publishing The Ali Farah Chronicle in 2008 – as we became police and threatened – shows how important it is to have a power-critical and media-critical weekly newspaper that can strike undogmatically in several directions. New Time was in December as well only Norwegian newspaper which printed the SAS magazine's Frp article, which in practice was censored by Frp. And last week, January 16, 2013, we were well first newspaper in Norway which shows on the front what leftist Charlie Hebdo is great for, with his religious criticism both against Christianity and Islam, says Herbjørnsrud.

- Well, and this should mean what?

- The point is that this shows the need for power-critical New Time in our new ice age, or what? I do not think there is a particularly better debate climate for radical and power-critical voices now in the FRP state of Norway than there was under Haakon Lie in the 1950s. We have new attempts at gagging and control, with threats from both terrorists and right-wing extremists, which the authorities use as an excuse for both arming, surveillance and oppression of minorities, says Herbjørnsrud.

The ring ended

Herbjørnsrud states that he applied for a New Time job for the first time in 1984, but first joined the youth editorial staff Press in 1986-87. He had his first Ny Tid article in print on 2 August 1990, a book review of Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland", under the pseudonym "Dag Tranberg".

This is the second time Herbjørnsrud is actively seeking new candidates to take over his own editorial post: After the reorganization in March 2006, he asked Martine Aurdal to take over as editor – and he then became development editor and deputy editor until November 2009. Herbjørnsrud continues as a part-time employee of the newspaper , but takes leave to write a book, for which he has received a scholarship from the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers' Association (NFF). Herbjørnsrud will own a smaller share in the newspaper. Einar Krog Grimsgaard, Ivar Evensmo, Torild Skard and Trygve Natvig are among other minority owners in NTO AS.

- I started fully in the press after I got to join the start-up of the new Morgenbladet from the spring of 1993. I then wrote for Truls Lie, who then ran a global and radical newspaper, until I started in Aftenposten in 1995. When I saw 22 years later can leave the New Time editor job to Lie, I feel that the ring has ended, Herbjørnsrud concludes.

MODERN TIMES AND THE EDITORS

• In 2015, Ny Tid celebrates its 40th anniversary as a weekly newspaper. The first edition came on August 15, 1975, then Orientering (first edition 19.02.1953) went over to the newly started Ny Tid. The transition took place at the same time as the transition from SF to SV and was controversial – the three earlier Orienteringeditors Finn Gustavsen, Sigurd Evensmo and Kjell Cordtsen protested in vain.
• Ny Tid became formally independent from SV in 1998, when the party only became a minority shareholder. The governing party SV sold out completely on 24 January 2006, when the publisher Damm / Egmont and Tom Harald Jenssen took over after an almost unanimous general meeting – in a process led by editor Dag Herbjørnsrud (employed from July 2005).
• The transfer to Damm was controversial in parts of the press: Berge Furre, Tore Linné Eriksen and Dag Seierstad went out after they were voted down – they criticized the SV decision and the Ny Tid editorial staff. Seierstad took its New Time column «Orientering»And went to Klassekampen, where Ny Tids Orienteringlogo was used in the column launch. Tore Linné Eriksen started in 2013 as a book reviewer in Ny Tid.
• New Time set in 2006 Norwegian circulation record in the newspaper world, with a circulation increase of 117 percent. During the Media Days 2007, Ny Tid received gold for «Restructuring of the Year». The jury stated that the reorganization "with international judgment must be among the most successful metamorphoses in editorial redesign in the kingdom in modern times."
• In 2007, the distribution of Ny Tids started «Norwegian of the year»prices in December, in response to the Language Council's controversial Norwegian definition. First prize went to Kohinoor (2007). The last one awarded went to Neda Ibrahim (2013) from Stavanger, forcibly deported to Jordan with family.
• In August 2013, editor-in-chief Dag Herbjørnsrud went to court against the international owners of Ny Tid & Orientering AS after they had tried to stop, and delayed, an Erdogan-critical post by Seher Aydar in Red Youth. On behalf of a number of editorial staff, he filed for bankruptcy against his own owners. On 26 August 2013, it was entered into settlement between Herbjørnsrud and the owners. In November 2013, Herbjørnsrud took over 86 per cent of the shares in NTO AS. Herbjørnsrud now owns less than 10 percent.
• On 7 February 2014, the newspaper was converted to tabloid newspaper format again, after having been in magazine information since 27 January 2006.
• At the extraordinary general meeting on 28 January 2015, the articles of association stipulate that no one shall own, directly or indirectly, more than 35 per cent of the shares in Ny Tid & Orientering AS. As of January 2015, no shareholder owns more than 35 percent.