How do we develop journalism and measure engagement in ways that actually move the needle?

This is the daily question for Bonnier News Local and Gota Media, a media group comprising 60 local news brands across Sweden.

To solve this, we created the Core Model — a quality metric designed to drive engagement while maintaining a strategic focus on the critical 30-39 age group.

Creating a common currency

The Core Model is built on a simple premise: Reader engagement is the primary driver of a healthy subscription business. However, with 60 different brands, we needed a “common currency” that accounted for varying audience sizes and resources.

Instead of looking at general traffic, the model isolates engagement among each brand’s logged-in subscribers. With this method, we measure total core readers and target core readers, i.e., subscribers within the strategic 30-39 age group.

The main purpose of the model is to identify core content — original journalism that aligns with a local brand’s specific engagement targets, in total and within the strategic 30-39 age group. The underlying metrics are content length and engagement time per article or video.

Whether it is a tiny newsroom in the north or a large daily in the south, the metric allows us to benchmark performance across the entire group. It moves the conversation from “how many clicks” to “how much value did we provide our subscribers?”

By focusing on these metrics, editors can move away from “clickbait” and prioritise the specific types of stories — such as local investigations, guides, and human-interest pieces — that actually retain and attract paying subscribers.

We also introduced the concept of “Gold Content” — content where a local news brand outperforms its targets, regardless of its size or circumstances. This gives us a unique opportunity to share good examples that could be replicated and elaborated on by other newspapers.

Rapid rollout 

A model is only as good as its adoption. In an intensive two-month sprint, we rolled out the Core Model to 1,000 journalists through a series of physical and digital workshops.

Today, the model is part of the daily routine. It supports continuous development by helping editors “turn the list upside down”— to identify which content isn’t reaching subscribers and stop producing it. We showcase these wins through:

• Gold content of the week: recognitions shared through internal channels
• Här är grejen (Here’s the thing): Our internal TV show where content developers present successful examples that can be replicated elsewhere.
• Dashboard views: highlighting “Gold Content” and high-performing local journalism across our 60 different brands.
• Inspiration sessions and meetings: where news editors and journalists build best practices and a culture of sharing.

Clear strategic objectives

Our campaign had three clear goals:

• Establish a shared framework: Enable benchmarking across 60 brands, regardless of size.
• Make data actionable: Give every journalist insights into what content connects with the 30-39 demographic.
• Foster collaboration: Break down silos to ensure a “gold idea” in one town can be replicated in 59 others.

Driving engagement and revenue

The results after just six months prove that quality engagement is directly linked to commercial success:

• Content volume: The number of “Core Content” publications — original stories driving deep engagement — rose by 38%.
• Subscription growth: Total digital subscriptions surged from 380,000 to 415,000.
• Digital transformation: Gota Media surpassed 100,000 digital subscribers for the first time, with over 50% of its base now digital. Bonnier News Local increased its digital share from 59% to 65%.

By aligning our diverse newsrooms around a shared vision and actionable data, we have not just increased numbers; we have also strengthened the DNA of local journalism. We have turned our size into our greatest strength, ensuring our journalism remains indispensable to the communities we serve.

This is how we strike gold.

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