Will Europe follow Finnish trends?

No one would claim that Finland’s media, their ownership, direction or methods are currently going through a restless phase - but that has been true for almost two decades since one of the country’s best newspapers, Uusi Suomi, died from managerial incompetence in 1991.

The dominating calm of a winter lake which informs the whole press when it comes to reporting its own business has recently been broken, however, by a hairdresser called Susan.

She was the mistress of former journalist Matti Vanhanen, now the country’s premier, and everyone is agog that they first met on the internet.

The Finns enjoy kiss-and-tell stories, of course, but they usually involve ski jumpers or aspirant Miss Worlds. High political office makes this case special. It has opened a strenuous debate between journalists who think the ‘victims’ are fair game and those who prefer the moral high ground, insisting the story is a private matter that should concern no one else.

Such arguments are familiar also to the Finns but the novelty here is that they are being battled over in the press and traditional discretion has been thrown to the - freezing - winds.

We can go no further without bumping into Helsingin Sanomat which, in a country with a strong regional press, is almost a national newspaper. A broadsheet, it quaintly runs advertisements on its front page and has a circulation close to half a million, giving it a dominating percentage of the 5.17-million population. It is greatly respected, too much so according to some critics, but remains unassailable in commercial terms.

Turku and Tampere both have fine dailies, respectively the Turun Sanomat and Aamulehti, but their circulations are only one quarter of their competitors in the capital. Aamulehti is a showpiece of production technology, often visited by foreign publishing houses who want to see how the future works. But like all Finnish newspapers, it does not have much growth potential.

There are 56 newspapers published between four to seven times a week and 158 emerging at least weekly - a lot when measured against the population.

At the market’s lower end competition is aggressive. The two ‘boulevard papers’, Ilta-Sanomat with a circulation of 216,000 and Iltalehti (202,000) are evening papers so keen to hit the streets ahead of their rival that they have elbowed each other into both being on sale from six in the morning.

They trade in gossip and sensationalism and had a virtual monopoly in this playground until a Danish-owned TV weekly, 7 Days, challenged them at their own game, so successfully indeed that it, in turn, has its own imitators. Publishing for entertainment is a relatively new idea.

Finland ranks first in the EU for newspaper readership, selling on average 532 copies per 1,000 citizens; in the world it ranks third, behind Norway and Japan. Total newspaper circulation is at 3.3m.

Some 88% of newspapers are sold by subscription (a mere 12% through single purchases) and 80% of subscription-paid copies are delivered through the mailbox before 6.30am. The unseen Mercuries of this service are sentimentally appreciated, rather as paper-round boys are in the US. No matter what the weather, they always get through. But newspapers have been losing their market share to TV and magazines since the late 1980s.

In broadcasting, too, there is a plethora of choice: two public services (YLE) and two commercial. On all of them analogue television will be completely phased out by the end of the year.

The national news agency (STT) was dumped last year by YLE, a seriously bruising decision for the wire’s finances as well as loss of face. It reflects a trend, seen also at the Helsingin Sanomat, for bringing most editorial services in-house. Not all the hacks are happy about this.

Nor are they at Kauppalehti, the leading business daily (81,006), where 20% of editorial staff will be axed by the month’s end. "This is what happens when normal business criteria are imposed in place of earlier patrician ways," a Helsinki economist comments. "As there’s no culture of editorial control over journalists, the only way to stem the productivity rot is to throw staff out regularly."

Its rival, Taloussanomat, (39,229) has never made a euro for its Helsingin Sanomat owners since it opened ten years ago. It is claimed this newspaper has more on-line viewers than ‘real’ readers. If true, is this the shape of things to come for newspapers elsewhere in Europe?

• David Haworth is managing editor of the quarterly magazine Continental.

No one would claim that Finland’s media, their ownership, direction or methods are currently going through a restless phase - but that has been true for almost two decades since one of the country’s best newspapers, Uusi Suomi, died from managerial incompetence in 1991.