The position and role of the Finnish News Agency (STT) as a national news provider has fundamentally changed since the 2011 MDM report was published. At least 31 media companies still jointly own the agency; however, now the Sanoma Group owns a majority of the shares at 74.42 per cent. Although public broadcaster Yle has returned to be an STT subscriber after a parliamentary decision, it still runs an in-house news service for its own purposes. The two smaller news services – UP News Service, with social democratic roots, as well as Startel,owned by the Sanoma Group – still exist. The leading news media also follow the main international news agencies, like earlier.
In our interviews, several editors-in-chief of leading national news media organisations shared that they were now using less STT content or were using it mainly for more limited purposes than earlier. Meanwhile, the tabloid newspaper Iltalehti stopped using STT completely, arguing that the quality of journalistic work has since improved due to more engaging reporters:
Iltalehti does not use STT anymore. They realised the telegram-like information provided was generally on a very basic level. Iltalehti performs better on its own, and leaving STT has not been detrimental in any way. Now, the reporters have to work more hands-on and find their own information, thereby improving the standards of reporting on the whole. (IL journalist, 2020)
The reduced interest in using STT is a tendency that already existed even a decade back, and perhaps reached a visible peak by 2015, when HS also quit its subscription to STTtext services. After Sanoma Group acquired the majority of STT shares in 2018, HS returned to subscribe to the service; however, it is now using it as an alarm system rather than a content provider:
Yes, we have several international news providers, STT is used within Finland. HS also works on the serving end of syndication providing material for others. Sanoma owns a large part of STT, which needs to exist, so Sanoma keeps it alive, not so much for profit but for the importance of having it around (HS editor-in-chief 2020.)
The use of STT content has decreased also because of growing newspaper ownership concentration and increasing content interchange between newspapers of the same owner (Pernu, 2020). This tendency, as well as the increasing influence of public relations material, was well recognised already at the time of the 2011 MDM report. However, resources for in-house newsgathering have since been continuously decreasing. The problem is now becoming more serious, as Finnish online journalists are no longer able to use reliable sourcing practices and meet the expectations of young adults, who expect their online news to be always verified (Manninen, 2019).
In recent years, the network of national and foreign correspondents of leading news media organisations has been shrinking. For example, HS had six domestic offices in 2009, and now has only four. STThad two regional domestic offices in 2015, but now it relies just on a network of freelance correspondents. STT has also withdrawn its foreign correspondents from everywhere except Brussels. MTV3has cut down on both the number of regional offices as well as foreign correspondents – currently, it has four foreign correspondents. Meanwhile, HS has a total of eight foreign correspondents, and one of those positions is rotated from one country to another on an annual basis (Hoikkala, 2014). However, Yle’s network of 25 domestic offices and nine permanent foreign correspondents remains the same despite the cuts in its annual budget (Yle, 2014).
In 2020, HS started to publish selected stories translated from The Wall Street Journal. The purpose of this was to complement the reporting on American presidential elections. The longstanding trend of increasing editorial cooperation and syndication within Finnish newspaper chains has become even more visible after Sanoma Group bought all Alma Media regional newspapers in February 2020. HS has been publishing a growing number of Aamulehti content, and vice versa. This reorganisation also meant that Aamulehti and Satakunnan Kansa were going to end their cooperation with Lännen Media, a joint content production company of eleven regional newspapers.
The latest phenomenon is probably content cooperation between independent local and national news outlets. HS has been publishing local content from Kauhajoki-lehti, while Ylä-Satakunta will start publishing Ylecontent on its website. A recent study on the diversity of media content provision described the Finnish development to be quite alarming, as the number of media outlets is decreasing at the same time media concentration of outlets is increasing (Ala-Fossi et al., 2020).
