Dagbladet - History

History

The newspaper was founded in 1869 by Anthon Bang. Hagbard Emanuel Berner served as its first editor in chief and the first issue was published on January 2, 1869. From 1884 to 1977 the newspaper was affiliated to the Liberal party (Venstre). Since 1977, it has officially been politically neutral, though it has kept its position as a liberal newspaper, also incorporating some radical (leftist) stands in issues like the language struggle, church policies, feminism, intimate relationship, criminal care etc. The newspaper was in 1972 against Norway joining the EU, but had changed to pro in 1994.

Dagbladet has played an important role in development of new editorial products in Norway. In 1990, the newspaper was the first in Norway to publish a Sunday edition in more than 70 years, and in 1995 it became the first of the major Norwegian newspapers with an online edition. The actual first newspaper was a regional paper called 'Brønnøysunds Avis'. Over the past few years Dagbladet has had success with the Saturday supplement Magasinet which reaches 25.3% of the adult population of Norway.

Dagbladet is owned by the privately held company Berner Gruppen. Jens P. Heyerdahl is the largest owner and has effective control through several different companies.

DB Medialab AS also owns 50% of the Norwegian web portal and ISP start.no and runs the online community Blink.

The paper received some international attention in July 2006 when it ran a story in support of the 9/11 Truth Movement. The article, "The Third Tower", came a few weeks after Le Monde Diplomatique's Norway edition ran a similar front page story.

Due to the declining of daily circulation the newspaper the last couple of years have reduced the number of workers with some hundreds. Because of this the newspaper focused more on "simpler news". But recent years the newspaper have chosen a editorial direction on hard news.