Last autumn the editorial staff of the Cars section in Finland's leading tabloid Ilta-Sanomat and Start! programme from TV channel Nelonen joined their forces and Sanoma made history. The result was Finland's first multimedia car editorial office, where every editor provides content for both the TV programme and the car section of Ilta-Sanomat as well as web.
Two two-person editorial staffs merged into one. This means that car journalists Tommi Lempinen and Manu Metso from Ilta-Sanomat now appear on TV at Nelonen's Start! on Saturday mornings and also on prime time at TV channel Jim, which shows Start! reruns on Wednesdays. On the other end, producer Antti Liinpää and Jussi Partanen from the Samuus production house have learned how to write articles for newspaper - in addition to their normal routines, filming and editing.
"The new way of doing has had its challenges, of course. Shooting a TV programme takes time and the inserts have to have manuscripts. Additionally, we have to ensure that the Cars section of Ilta-Sanomat gets done every week as usual and the website is constantly updated with the latest news from the world of cars. So far we have managed quite well," says Manu Metso.
Initially the co-operation between IS Cars and Start! was agreed to continue until summer 2009. However, everything has gone so smoothly that at the moment there doesn't seem to be any reasons not to continue the good work.
"The feedback has been positive. Co-operation really is power! With the new arrangement both the readers of Ilta-Sanomat and the viewers of TV can be served better. There are no exact statistics, but according to rough calculations the TV programme, the Cars section of Friday's Ilta-Sanomat along with its website, Nelonen's Start! programme and the website of Start! reach more than 500,000 heavy users interested in cars," Metso sums up, He believes that the amount of visitors is still growing.
There is still a lot to do – and a lot to learn too. The target is set high: the combination of TV programme, web sites and print media will be developed the leading journalistic car media in Finland.
Ilta-Sanomat is part of Finland's leading newspaper publisher, Sanoma News, a division of the Sanoma Group.
Nelonen Media is part of Sanoma Entertainment, the electronic media division of the Sanoma Group.