Insight Shapes News

About Insight Shapes News

Insight Shapes News is a podcast hosted by Nils Ove Håland Riise, who works at Kilkaya, a leader in analytics and informed personalization for news and publishers. The podcast features deep-dive conversations with industry experts, covering topics such as editorial insights, audience engagement, AI-driven personalization, and the evolving relationship between technology and newsrooms. With a focus on practical applications and real-world experiences, Insight Shapes News explores how data, innovation, and editorial strategies shape the future of journalism.

Publisher

Kilkaya with Nils Ove Håland Riise

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 Mar 2025

Latest episode

16 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

21 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   16 Sept 2026

   #21 The King Is Dead. Do We Switch Off Personalization in News? Christoph Schmitz at Schibsted

   Some news is too important for anyone to miss. Does that mean everyone should see the same homepage? “The king is dead” has long been Nils’s example of a story in demos for personalization with news publishers and broadcasters, that must stay at the top, regardless of what an algorithm thinks a reader wants. It raises a question at the heart of news personalization: when one story matters to everyone, where does personalization belong? In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise welcomes back Christoph Schmitz, Product Manager for Curate, Schibsted’s content recommendation system. Together, they explore how editorial judgment and personalization work during major breaking news. Christoph explains the different layers of editorial control: deciding which stories can appear, what everyone needs to see, and where recommendations can help readers find relevant coverage. The conversation also challenges what reading behaviour tells us. Following every World Cup story doesn’t necessarily make someone a lifelong football fan. How quickly should recommendation systems forget yesterday’s interests? And towards the end, Christoph raises a question that could change how newsrooms work: what would a fully personalized homepage look like if editors couldn’t pin stories, but still retained editorial control? 🎧 Topics we cover: • Should personalization be switched off during major breaking news? • What editors control before an algorithm recommends anything • Why the homepage remains a shared reference point • Designing for occasional readers, not just the most active users • Why recommendation systems need to forget • Preparing news products for sudden traffic surges • A future with editorial control, but without pinning For anyone working with homepage strategy, personalization, or newsroom product development, this episode explores how to balance what matters to everyone with what matters to each reader. 🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, technology, and the choices shaping the news industry.

2. 

   16 Aug 2026

   20 The Change Tax: Why Print-Era Hierarchy Is Killing News Media in the AI Age. Selma Stern, Independent Advisor

   Most people in media have not heard the term "change tax," but they have felt it. Selma Stern describes it as work that keeps coming back without ever getting resolved, like the same alignment meeting held three times in a year, with nothing decided each time. In this episode, host Nils Ove Håland Riise talks with Selma Stern, an independent advisor to media companies. Stern has worked as Chief of Staff at Axel Springer, Chief Membership Officer at Business Insider, and Chief Customer Officer at Fortune, after starting her career at BCG. Her main point centers on how newsroom structures have not kept pace with how the work itself has changed. In the print era, roles were fixed and predictable. An editor-in-chief's job description barely changed from year to year, and the workflow, from writer to editor to press, was linear and well understood. Digital broke that. Editors now need to work fluently with product, data, and technology teams that speak a different language and move on a different rhythm. AI is accelerating that shift again, requiring even more flexibility and cross-team coordination than the digital transition already demanded. Stern argues that many media companies are still organized the way they were for print, and that structure is becoming a real constraint as the pace of change increases. To see whether this pattern holds up across the industry, Stern analyzed employee reviews from 20 publishers in 9 countries, looking for language about friction (silos, unclear ownership) versus language about integration (clear roles, teams working well together). Publishers with the most friction language were shrinking or had recently laid off staff. Publishers that were growing, including the New York Times, the Economist, and Le Monde, showed more integration language than friction. That pattern shows up clearly in a real example. In the same week in February 2026, the New York Times announced record subscriber growth while the Washington Post's struggles were widely reported. Stern argues the real difference is not who owns each company, but how each one is organized. The episode ends with a look ahead: micropayments, AI agents that could buy articles on a reader's behalf, and whether subscriptions are still the right model for news. Topics covered: What the change tax is, in Selma Stern's own words Why print-era roles and workflows do not translate to digital and AI How editors now need to work across product, data, and technology teams How Stern measured this across 20 publishers using employee reviews New York Times and Washington Post: same week, opposite results Micropayments, AI agents, and the future of subscriptions Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and structural change in the news industry.

3. 

   1 Jul 2026

   #19 The News Homepage Formula: A/B Testing, Ice Ice Baby stunt, and Losing Control to Personalization. Helge Voll Hustad at VG (Schibsted)

   In this episode of Insight Shapes News by Kilkaya, host Nils Ove Håland Riise sits down with Helge Voll Hustad, Homepage Editor at VG — Norway's largest news site, where he curates the homepage with news for millions of Norwegians. They start with VG's now-famous "Ice Ice Baby" homepage, run in the middle of one of the darkest news months of the year, and what it says about the room editors have to experiment, even on a heavy news day. From there, Helge walks through the real mechanics of editing a tabloid homepag at scale: why "the mix" of hard news and light news is a constant balancing act, why a billionaire's name in a headline often underperforms simply writing "the billionaire," and why familiar faces like Prime Minister Støre don't need a caption at all — something AI headline tools still can't reliably figure out. The conversation also digs into personalization and control. Helge used to be able to place every single story on VG's front page by hand. Now an algorithm controls everything below the top 20 — and he's candid about what that trade-off costs an editor, what VG would need to see before moving that line further, and how the team weighs personalization against its societal responsibility to surface hard news. They close on the three KPIs VG actually optimizes for, the "superuser trap" of editing for readers who visit eight times a day versus once, and why VG's extreme high direct-traffic share makes the homepage worth protecting. 🎧 Topics we cover: The "Ice Ice Baby" homepage and how far editorial humor can go What a homepage editor actually does, curating 70–80 live articles "The mix" — balancing hard news, sport, celebrity and politics Why an NYT study of tens of thousands of A/B tests found no universal rule Billionaire vs. named billionaire, and when a picture replaces a caption Where AI headline generation breaks down — and why Losing control: from editing every story to only the top 20 The bonfire principle vs. personalization, and the societal obligation problem Clicks, quick exit, and demographics — VG's three core KPIs The "superuser" trap: editing for readers who visit 8x a day vs. once Why so much of VG's traffic comes directly to the Homepage A closing question passed from Tarmo Paju (Delfi) on journalism's role in covering war 🎧 Subscribe to Insight Shapes News for conversations on journalism, AI, personalization, and the structural changes shaping the news industry.

Who has been a guest on Insight Shapes News

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Christoph Schmitz
• Dominic Grzbielok
• Bente Håvimb
• Dana Schlüenzen
• Markus Franz

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Spotify

5.0 / 5

7 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 5 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

10

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

0

Contact Insight Shapes News

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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