Looking for a job in Bodø?

June 1, 2010

Today was our first career day in Norway. With my work experience, I was matched with two local organizations: NRK Nordland and Avisa Nordland. I was excited about entering a newsroom in Norway and learning about the similaries and differences between media outlets in two different countries. As I expected, Norway does follow a similar format to the United Kingdom in that all residents must pay a fee to own a television. They are not licensing fees but revenue generated to help support programming and networks within the country. Norway is also a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and thus able to participate in the Eurovision competition.

NRK Nordland is a radio and television broadcasting station in the county of Nordland. There are several satellite offices but the main branch is in Bodø. I arrived at the station at 8:15 am to meet Eivind Undrum Jacobsen, the editor, and sit in on the morning meeting at 8:30 am. Although the meeting was held in Norwegian, newsrooms are the same everywhere and I could tell the editor was discussing story ideas and hearing from reporters on what their plan was for the day. The main stories for the day included a discussion about the Gulf Stream spill and its impact on Norwegians, the fact that SAS is sending its planes to Israel for maintenance and the school and transportation strikes. Immediately after the meeting, the staff dispersed throughout the building and I was introduced to Martin Steinholt, a researcher and occasional radio personality at NRK. Martin had his five year old son with him today since it was the beginning of the school strike. Since Martin is in kindergarten, he is the first one affected and on day one, the primary teachers were walking out but the teachers assistants were allowed to work and provide daycare for a few hours of the normal workday, from 11-2 pm. The teachers were striking to fight for equal pay for women. As we dropped off his son at the daycare, we found out that tomorrow the assistants will also be going on strike and the primary and secondary schools will be closed indefinitely. I learned that in Norway, there is an expected strike season that happens every two years or so. Currently, the schools, transportation and printers are all either on strike or on the verge of going on strike. Oddly, when I asked Martin if there was any coverage of the pending strike, his answer was that if there was no resolution in a couple days, they would do some interviews. In the United States, a teacher strike would be front page news days before it even happened!

When we got back to the office, Martin gave me the tour of the building including stops at the radio booths, the television control room and the newsroom. Unlike most newsrooms back home, there were no cubicles here but rather open desks and the main wall as replaced by windows providing a panoramic view of the sea and the fort. Definitely makes going to work a bit easier! It was interesting to see two media outlets, television and radio, combined under one roof. The researchers were the same and the title research essentially indicates reporter; somebody who is looking for a story and doing the background work for the piece. Television and radio segments are only 30 seconds to a minute long, so the research needs to be concise and since this is a county-wide broadcast, any story needs to be tied back to Nordland. For example, the top stories today included the spill in the Gulf Coast and the reporter was looking for a Nordland resident affected by the calamity. The newsrooms can of course get busy at various times, but for the most part, it did feel very relaxed. NRK Nordland hosts three radio broadcasts, from 6-9 am, 11-1 and 4-5:30 pm. Those hours include a live radio personality delivering news, traffic updates and weather reports between music. About 85 percent of the show is live in-studio, while the remaining is pre-taped interviews. During the afternoon show, from 4-5:30, the remaining 1.5 hour is given to dedicated to national news. In addition to those shows, a reporter gives the 2 minute news bulletin on the hour every hour between 6 am and 5 pm. Television is very similar, there are two tv broadcasts in the morning and the afternoon for about 30 minutes each. Perhaps the biggest difference here was that each staff member was expected to take on multiple tasks, whether it was researching, reporting, working the camera or editing reels for the live broadcast.

After a quick lunch at NRK, I headed toward the downtown square to the offices of AN Media. Avisa Nordland is the community newspaper for all of Nordland county. While headquartered in Bodø, AN does have several other branches including Feuske, Røst and Harstadt to name a few. In the Bodø office, there are about 30 employees. The Sjefradaktør (Editor-in-Chief) Jan-Eirik Hanssen was out of town for a conference on a new software program they introduced to their office a few weeks ago, so I met the equivalent to their Redaktør (Managing Editor) Vibeke Madsen. The office structure at AN includes one editor-in-chief, three rotating managing editors, section editors and then reporters. The three rotating managing editors take a week each of being the second in command, followed by one week off since they are expected to work 24/7 during the week and then a third week to work on other projects before taking the helm again. Vibeke explained how the managing editor is asked to carry a phone and should any problems arise in the evening or night, she is expected to solve the issue. She is responsible for assigning stories and filling space in the magazine once the sales department gives her the paid advertisements for the day. The section editors are in charge of editing the reporters’ pieces and submitting the work in time, however, she would proofread and edit the front page stories or any other controversial pieces in the newspaper. The section editors would then lay out the pages using created templates and fill in the spaces for headlines, photo, captions and text. Vibeke tries to hold several meetings during the day starting with the 9 am staff meeting for story ideas, then a series of conference calls with other branches for updates on story submissions and then a meeting in the afternoon to learn about updates on the developing stories and to pick a lead story for the front page. Her hours are generally 7 am to 4:30-5 pm, followed by another couple hours of work from home in the evening and of course, to be on-call should any printer issues arise. As managing editor, Vibeke earns about 800,000 NOK.

I then asked to talk to a reporter to learn more about the investigating process in Bodø. My host for the next couple hours was Iris Lyngmo, a ten year veteran to Avisa Nordland and a journalist with many national awards for her investigative pieces. Iris focuses on hard news stories, preferring to dig in and uncover stories. She said at any given time, she is likely working on one to two stories and is currently in a competition with a coworker to see who can earn the most covers! Since Iris was busy making travel plans for a story she plans to cover over the next couple days, we didn’t have a lot of time but Iris wanted to ask me about the gripes of journalists back home and in particular, whether there is fair compensation for the work. Iris, who represents the journalists in the office, said she just finished talking with the central office regarding the pay and after weeks of negotiations, walked away with a promised 10,000 NOK raise for her fellow writers. Her bosses at AN Bodø were unhappy with this, insisting that the newspaper needs to tighten its reigns. Iris, however, said AN has been increasing its profit every year and rather than offer the employees a better pay or work environment, the bosses continue to fire staff and make the remaining reporters work twice the hours on a salary with no overtime. Now, as she heads into negotiations with her bosses next week, Iris insists that she will ask for more than the 10,000 NOK promised increase but does not have high hopes for any change. On average, reporters at AN Bodø make about 247,000-297,000 NOK, which after you subtract 40 percent for taxes, does not amount to much. The same position in Oslo would receive 600,000 NOK or more. It is interesting that while journalism seems to be a more important profession in Norway than in the United States, the reporters face the same issues of needing to fight for more pay and feeling overworked and uncompensated, particularly compared to the editors.

To start the evening, we all met at Cafeteria for a traditional Norwegian dinner. Items on the menu include fish balls (not a big hit), stew and Norwegian hamburgers which are open-faced sandwiches. After dinner, Majvi and Per took the group on a field trip to see the world’s strongest whirlpool at Saltstraumen. Saltstraumen, approximately half an hour from Bodø, is a sound with a strong tidal current connecting the channel Saltfjord with its extension, the large Skerstadfjord. This tidal current is the strongest in the world, bringing 400 million tons of sea water through a 1.8 mile long and 500 feet wide waterway. This happens every six hours and today, the strongest whirlpool will be visible at 8:51 pm. The whirlpools or maelstroms are roughly 32 feet in diameter and 16 feet in depth. Surrounding Saltstraumen is the Børvasstindene mountains, making this area one of the most beautiful places we've seen in Norway! On this particular day, while the whirlpools were certainly impressive, they did not live up the "looking into the devil's mouth" description we had heard from the locals. Sitting by the water, watching this natural phenomenon was pretty amazing though and we have heard that the government is taking steps to protect the land. They have turned down several applications to build houses down closer to the water so as to preserve the landscape.