Argument 1: The Fallacy of the “Digital Bridge” and the Existential Threat of the S-Curve
The first and perhaps most philosophical argument Steiro posits is a rejection of the traditional narrative regarding digital transformation. For decades, media leaders have operated under the comforting illusion that digitization is a finite project—a journey with a distinct beginning and end. Steiro uses the metaphor of a “bridge” or a voyage across an ocean to describe this misconception. The industry told itself that it was crossing from the “old world” (analog/print) to the “new world” (digital), and that once the crossing was complete, organizations would stand on “stable ground.” Steiro argues vehemently that this is a lie. There is no bridge, and there is no stable ground waiting on the other side. The transformation is not a project to be completed; it is a permanent state of being.
He illustrates this through the Norwegian concept of the “fall summit” (false summit). In mountaineering, a false summit occurs when a climber pushes toward what appears to be the peak, only to arrive and discover there is yet another, higher peak behind it. Steiro applies this to the digital media landscape. Every time a newsroom masters a new technology or platform—be it the desktop internet, the smartphone, or social media distribution—they believe they have “arrived.” In reality, they have only reached a false summit. The moment they catch their breath, a new challenge, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or platform dominance by tech giants, emerges. Steiro asserts that the psychological toll of this is significant; employees become exhausted by the endless climb. Therefore, the role of a modern media leader is not to promise stability, which is impossible, but to motivate the team to keep climbing while being honest about the uncertainty. He suggests that anyone seeking a predictable future should leave journalism entirely, joking that they should “start working in the library,” because the newsroom is now a place of perpetual friction and flux.
This argument connects deeply to his second major metaphor: the S-Curve and the Titanic. Steiro warns against the complacency that comes with current success. He points out that VG (Verdens Gang) is currently a clear market leader in Norway, with massive daily traffic and digital profitability. They have reached a “moon landing” of being digitally sustainable, theoretically able to shut down the printing press without firing a single reporter. However, he frames this success as a moment of supreme danger. This is the top of the S-Curve—the point of maximum maturity just before an inevitable decline.
He compares his feeling to that of the conductor of the orchestra on the Titanic. The ship (the legacy media model or the current iteration of digital success) has historically hit icebergs (market shifts), and while the band plays on (conferences, self-congratulation), the structural integrity of the vessel is compromised. He cites Reuters statistics showing the devastation of the US newspaper market—3,000 papers gone and 60% of jobs lost—as a foreshadowing of what will happen in Europe. The danger is that employees at a successful company like VG feel safe; they believe they are on a “life raft” leaving the Titanic, but Steiro argues they are still on the ship.
The “Curse of the S-Curve” dictates that no tree grows into the sky. Current users are aging, and recruitment of young readers is stalling. To survive, a media house cannot just ride the current wave of success; they must jump to a new S-Curve before the current one collapses. Steiro uses the failure of VG’s iPad strategy as a cautionary tale of misunderstanding this shift. They treated the iPad as a “digital newspaper reader” (a lean-back experience) rather than understanding the device’s true nature. They tried to impose old habits on new technology. To avoid repeating this mistake with AI and the next generation of platforms, Steiro argues that leaders must embrace “friction” and “disagreement.” Optimism about the status quo is fatal. A leader must cultivate a culture where uncertainty is nurtured because it forces the organization to question its assumptions and adapt before it is too late.
Argument 2: Radical Organizational Agility and the Integration of AI (The VGX Model)
Steiro’s second core argument moves from philosophy to operational strategy: to survive the “false summits,” the very infrastructure of the newsroom must be dismantled and rebuilt. He challenges the traditional “silo-based” organization where journalists, developers, marketers, and commercial teams work in isolation. He argues that the problems of the future—specifically catering to young users and personalizing news experiences—do not respect organizational charts. A user’s problem does not fall neatly into “editorial” or “tech”; it requires a holistic solution. Therefore, the silos must be broken down.
He advocates for a “startup” mentality within the legacy organization. This involves moving from rigid departments to cross-functional teams where developers, journalists, HR, and finance experts sit in the same room to solve specific problems. Speed is identified as the single most important metric. The traditional approval hierarchies and segregated departments are too slow to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology. Steiro is transparent about VG’s new strategy, showing that they are actively focusing strictly on young users, even if it means ignoring the mature audience that currently pays the bills, because the young users represent the next S-Curve.
This operational shift culminates in the “VGX” project, which Steiro describes as a radical experiment in AI integration. VGX is a small, autonomous team that is “fully decoupled” from the main newsroom. The reasoning behind this separation is crucial: if they tried to innovate within the main VG newsroom, the “immune system” of the legacy culture would kill the initiative, or they would alienate their existing user base. VGX works in a “sandbox” to build a completely new news experience from scratch.
In this new model, the “article” as the atomic unit of news is obsolete. The “front page” is gone. Instead, they work with “news complexes” and “layers.” AI is not merely an add-on tool used to summarize text; it is built into the core of the product. Steiro describes a workflow where content from all Schibsted media serves as a database. “Agents” (AI algorithms) act as reporters and editors to assemble this information into new products. He introduces the concept of “Josefina,” the single human reporter in a large team of technologists and agents. She does not write articles in the traditional sense; she “directs the agents.” This signifies a massive shift in the definition of a journalist’s role—from a creator of raw copy to a conductor of automated systems.
Steiro argues that automation is inevitable. Breaking news and basic reporting are becoming “commoditized” and will be automated by someone, so it might as well be the news organizations themselves. He details tools like “VideoFi,” developed in collaboration with OpenAI, which turns text articles into video content instantly. This allows the organization to “versionize” content—taking one piece of journalism and instantly formatting it for text, audio, and video without requiring extra human labor. This strategy is not just about efficiency; it is about survival. By automating the “commodity” news, the organization frees up human resources. However, Steiro is careful to note that VGX is likely to fail as a standalone product (“Will this work? Probably not”), but the learning and the features developed there (like VideoFi) can be reintegrated into the main VG product. This represents a strategy of “innovation through separation”—building the future in a lab and then transplanting the successful organs into the main body.
Argument 3: The Imperative of High-Value, Human-Centric Journalism
The final argument acts as a counterbalance to the focus on AI and automation. Steiro concludes that while technology is the vehicle for change, unique, human journalism is the only sustainable fuel. He explicitly states, “I’m not a technologist… my job is to protect journalism.” He identifies the “most important box” in his strategy diagram as “Unique Content.”
Steiro argues that in an age of AI, mediocrity will be fatal. If a newsroom’s primary function is simply “moving information from A to B”—taking a press release or a wire report and rewriting it—they are doomed. ChatGPT and other AI models can perform this function faster, cheaper, and often better than a human. Therefore, any journalism that can be replicated by AI will be rendered valueless. This forces a re-evaluation of the “value chain” of journalism.
The argument is that newsrooms must move up the value chain. If the bottom of the chain (summarization, rewriting, basic reporting) is automated, humans must occupy the top tier. This tier consists of investigation, deep analysis, and emotional connection. Steiro emphasizes that the true value of a journalist lies in being where the “readers cannot go.” This means physical presence, face-to-face interviewing, and accessing closed sources. It means giving a voice to the voiceless and telling the stories of people who need to be seen. These are deeply human functions that require empathy, ethical judgment, and persistence—qualities that algorithms currently lack.
Steiro views the efficiency gains from AI not as a way to simply cut costs (though he acknowledges costs must come down), but as a mechanism to liberate resources for this high-value work. The logic is: use AI to handle the “commodity” news so that the human journalists can spend their time on investigative projects and complex storytelling that differentiates the brand.
He warns that without this unique content, the “walled gardens” of big tech and the “no-click search future” (where users get answers directly from Google/AI without clicking through to a website) will destroy the media business model. If the content is generic, the platform owns it. If the content is unique, exclusive, and highly valuable, the user has to come to the source. Thus, the strategy is a dual-pronged approach: aggressively adopt AI to handle the infrastructure and routine tasks (the VGX model), while simultaneously doubling down on the “craft” of journalism that requires a human pulse. He implies that the future of media belongs to those who can successfully merge these two worlds—using the “machine” to build the distribution and format, while relying on the “human” to provide the soul and the exclusive substance. Without the unique content, the technology is empty; without the technology, the unique content will never reach the audience.