It has been a bit of a journey so far.
A cool autumn day in 2000 I stood outside the Hi-fi Club in Arbeidergata in Oslo and talked on the phone.
– Hey, Arnt
At the other end spoke Arnt Sommerlund, the then editor of ITavisen. He wondered if I would jump over from Dagbladet, where I had been employed as a journalist since 1983.
was Not paid any better, Dagbladet lucrative pension plan went the flute, and I knew that internettbobla was on the wane (although it had not yet cracked) and that IT-the press was on unsafe ground.
Nedbemanningene had not yet begun in earnest in the Newspaper, and in the reason, there was no one who understood why I would replace the pasture. Not my colleagues in the Newspaper, not my wife.
Bad deal?
career Ladder was rather not much to boast of. There was no sjefredaktørstilling, just right. In the contract of employment was it just that I should assist Arnt Sommerlund in the project.
This is so with other words to be a bad deal for a journalist on the middagshøyden of his professional career.
In the Newspaper, I had mostly driven with rock and pop. Eventually I got to write a little about technology, and in 1995 I was involved in the start-up Dagbladet klassekampen.
Beyond any sense said I still 1. December 2000. It regretted I never on.
Super-gang
There was a very talented bunch, who at the time held in the Se and Hørs old premises in the Small Border: Espen Irwing Swanger, Norway’s undisputed mobile expert who now works for Altibox.
Martin Sivertsen, a supertalent and netthode in the beginning of the tjueåra that bubbled with ideas and now work in Pat Media in Trondheim.
Line Plots, a classic journalist who currently covers politics and community life for the Norwegian broadcasting corporation.
the Code wizard Erlend Schei, who created ITavisens largest klikksuksess ever with bredbåndsmåleren the Speedometer and which was later headhuntet to develop what was Schibsted’s large dairy cow: Find.no.
Then came the bubble
In the spring of 2001, it was only Martin, Espen, and I again. The IT bubble had burst, the money previously set as resolved was disappeared and the meetings acted now mostly just about how we should translate the high traffic (ITavisen was number five on the Gallup-the statistics of editorial sites in Norway) to krone and øre.
Fortunately we drive on, thanks to patient owners who in spite of lackluster sales believed that the high traffic numbers were values a time would be able to be traded in a sale to a bigger player.
They were right. In 2005 it was ITavisen sold to the Most, and thus we ended up in Mølleparken Akerselva together with the remnants of the Catalyst Media the former erkekonkurrentene digi.no and DinSide.
Click TV
the Management encouraged internal competition (“when the smoke has settled, then we’ll see who is left behind on the battlefield”), so we continued as before. We still managed to get in to a fruitful cooperation both with the digi.no, and for a time I was the editor for both.
Together with teknologistaben in Natural and ITavisens husfotograf Per Ervland we launched Click TV, the first real web TV success in Norway.
In this period was the editorial board new employees.
One of them was Ida Oftebro. She managed to bring to the editors humor and humanity that loosened up a little in the masculine, harsh tone that the site, which otherwise had been characterized by. I remember with particularly great joy “Christmas in the USB port”, which was ITavisens largest lesersuksess so far.
She recruited Trond Bie, young and an eager ITavisen reader who got the job on pure enthusiasm.
From the 90 to the 2000′s
It turned out to be a correct choice. Trond figured the “thing” in our readers, and ensured that ITavisen took the step from the ancient geek world, in the 90′s to the 2010′s nettvirkelighet where the web is an indispensable part of everyone’s life, and no longer a particular hobby for the few.
From the Natural we got into Thomas Marynowski, spillmedarbeider par excellence. He added ITavisen thorough and professional dypkunnskap that we sorely needed. Not only on games but also on mobile, online and desktop.
Most would renew their websites visually, and ITavisen got a new and hip design. The problem was just that the readers didn’t like it. The traffic plunged. It was obvious that the gamer – and nettgenerasjonen should be frabedt to be proposed to with an interface that resembled a bad parody of a 90′s gamer/råne/PC-culture.
Martin to the rescue
We learned a lesson here, and Martin received in the course of a few weeks the site back on track with his own cut, simple and uncluttered design. On purchase we had a tool where we could enter and edit directly on the web.
Traffic picked fortunately up again, and ITavisen experienced a golden age both editorial and lesermessig. We were again in front on the news and had close contact with a critical and knowledgeable lesermasse.
Very…
Very group, however, had other plans and than to bet the Norwegian IT-push. Shortly after that they purchased the Newspaper sold the digi.no to Teknisk Ukeblad. Trond Bie was transferred to the Natural, and for a while was ITavisen powered by yours truly alone.
It goes without saying that this was not a durable situation. Therefore, it was gratifying that Trond Bie had the opportunity to buy ITavisen to develop it further from their new base in San Francisco.
I invested 14 years of my professional life in ITavisen. Nevertheless, it is Trond Bie who first and foremost has made the site into a contemporary nyhetsorgan of technology with relevance for today’s readers.
ITavisen attends to the cool with the technology, an aspect that still interests me even though I’m working on other things now.
Congratulations with the 20th anniversary, and good luck with the next 20!
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