‘Digital media innovator’ joins Torstar
News industry leader from Sweden to help steer company’s transformation
Fredric Karen took his inspiration for a career in journalism from his grandmother, a radio pirate.
He grew up listening to stories of Britt Wadner, who broadcast aradio station from a boat in the international waters between Sweden and Denmark in the 1960s.
At the time, only public radio was allowed in Sweden, driving young people to stations from countries such as Luxembourg in search of the newest music.
“She was actually convicted to three months in jail, for the crime of owning a radio transmitter,” Karen said over the phone from Sweden.
“During those years she kept on fighting for freedom of speech and the right to broadcast and to compete against the monopoly that the public radio had and she became a kind of symbol, in this country, for those issues.”
Karen, an internationally recognized news media leader, has been named Torstar Corp. senior vice-president, editorial. He will take up the role on Jan. 2, 2019, the company announced Thursday morning.
“It’s kind of wild, crazy, but it’s still at the same time an amazing opportunity on many levels,” he said.
“It’s always a dream I’ve had, to come and work in a different country, learn another culture, learn to speak English a little better,” he added.
“And of course it’s always a challenge, if you have ideas that you have proved to work in your own country or your own workplace … if they can work somewhere else.” When Karen was a young man in Laholm, a small town in southern Sweden between Malmo and Gothenburg, his grandmother’s inspiration led him to the local paper, where he started covering sports on the weekend, reporting, taking photos, and eventually becoming a sub-editor.
Later, he headed to Stockholm, where he landed a job at the Aftonbladet newspaper.
Since then he has had an outstanding career over 30 years as areporter, editor, managing editor, editor-in chief and newspaper publisher at multiple news organizations in Sweden.
In 2002 he joined Svenska Dagbladet AB, where he has served as chief executive officer, chief editor and responsible publisher. It has won numerous top international and national journalism awards under his leadership.
Karen will focus on content science, data and analytics, and digital subscriptions at Torstar. He will work with senior editorial and department leaders at all of the company’s daily news outlets, including the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator, Waterloo Region Record, St. Catharines Standard, Niagara Falls Review, Welland Tribune, Peterborough Examiner and StarMetro publications in Toronto, Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, as well as Torstar’s 80-plus community publications in Ontario.
John Boynton, president and chief executive officer of Torstar Corp., called Karen a “proven leader with a passion for news and a global reputation as a reporter, editor, publisher and digital media innovator.”
“He brings to Torstar a deep commitment to quality journalism, a determination to address difficult times in the media industry and a proven record of digital innovation that will help our company as we transition to a more digital future,” Boynton said in a statement.
In recent years, Karen has focused on quality journalism and digital transformations of traditional news providers, working with algorithms and advanced data analytics in newsrooms to create news products that address the needs of readers and meet the challenges of a rapidly changing business environment.
“I think it’s been a journey for us all,” Karen said of his experience with algorithms in journalism.
“The world around you is changing all the time. You need to adapt.”
In this new position for Torstar, Karen will be responsible for developing and executing the company’s editorial content strategy, working with data science and marketing to maximize subscription revenues, leading the digital transforma- tion in the company’s newsrooms across Canada to create the newsrooms of the future, building relationships with customers and other key stakeholders throughout the country and helping senior executives maximize efficiencies in Torstar’s daily and community news operations.
Under Karen’s leadership, Svenska Dagbladet saw its best financial performance and has won multiple journalism awards, including the Swedish Pulitzer Prize, the Swedish “The Year’s Newspaper,” Swedish “Newsroom of the Year,” the Swedish Goldspad award for investigative journalism in 2015, 2016 and 2018, and the “Best in Show” prize in the 2016 International News Media Association’s Global Media Awards competition.
In recognition of his newsroom transformation successes, Karen has been a keynote speaker at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in 2017 and a keynote speaker at a number of European media conferences on digital transformation of newsrooms.
Aside from the job, Karen said he’s excited to explore Toronto, and Canada, a country he says is known to be “very Scandinavian-like” abroad.
He noted stories about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau always do well on Svenska Dagbladet’s website, as “he’s kind of seen as a really strong contrast to Donald Trump and everything else that is happening in North America at the moment.”
“I’ve heard a lot of good, amazing things about Canada and Toronto,” he added.
“Usually you guys export ice hockey players from Sweden, so it’s kind of funny that this is a journalistic job.”