Beta Borås goes live

“It feels great to be up and running and that the entire team is in place. Finally the project can really begin,” says editor Frida Dam Bergstedt.

Beta Borås is a test editorial team comprising four project staff employed by Borås Tidning. The team is working independently to the rest of the newspaper and forms the core of the research and innovation project Young Persons’ news universe for local current affairs journalism and debate.

The venture went live on April 5 – on schedule – and the project will study in an experimental spirit what types of local current affairs journalism and forms of debate attract and engage the 25–35 year-old target group. The live phase of the project will end on 30 September.

“As I said, it feels great. Though we also feel a degree of uneasiness. There may be people who believe we can already present finished, new solutions? And this is naturally not the case. Instead, the project has only just started in earnest,” says Frida Dam Bergstedt.

From Facebook to Youtube

Beta Borås is available on the Borås Tidning website, bt.se. The bt.se/betaboras/ website does not present a traditional flow of articles and other news items, rather the Beta Borås page is divided into general categories. So far, Beta Borås is also available on four other digital platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud and Youtube.

“This is one of our first tests, to view the website as a database. It is more adapted for content searches rather than as a flow of news that users receive. Our flow will instead – at least initially – be available on the other digital platforms,” says Frida Dam Bergstedt.

Alongside this experimental work by the test editorial team, researchers from RISE Interactive and Södertörn University are following the project. To date mainly through interviews with focus groups and workshops.

The Beta Borås test editorial team – Madeleine Bengtsson, Jonathan Oscarsson Dahlén, Frida Dam Bergstedt and Kristoffer Lidén – are looking forward to forthcoming work.

Follow Beta Borås on social media:

Facebook

Instagram

Youtube

Soundcloud

ABC about Beta Borås

• Beta Borås is a test editorial team as part of the research and innovation project Young Persons’ news universe for local current affairs journalism and debate
• The project is led by Media & Democracy at Lindholmen Science Park and other partners are Borås Tidning, RISE Interactive, and Södertörn University.
• The project will continue throughout 2018. However, the live phase of the test editorial team will end on 30 September.
• The test editorial team comprises four project staff employed by Borås Tidning specifically for the research and innovation project.
• In addition to the four parties above, project financing has been received from the Cultural Committee of Region Västra Götaland and the Carl-Olof and Jenz Hamrin Foundation in the amount of SEK 2,150,000.