The Press: Never Be Servile

The editor of the brand-new Stockholm daily newspaper asked his boss just one question as the first day's issues hit the streets in 1944: "How long before I have to start making money?" Said volatile Tor Bonnier, head of Sweden's biggest publishing house (books, magazines, the Stockholm morning Dagens Nyheter): "It's a question of how long my nerves hold out." Replied Editor Carl-Adam Nycop: "In that case, I'll have to hurry."

Editor Nycop hurried. Within 18 months the evening tabloid Expressen rocketed into the black, and it has since come to soothe Publisher Bonnier's nerves as the largest paper in all Scandinavia (circ. 370,000). Expressen is hale because it is hearty. Its formula: a smorgasbord of culture and sensationalism enlivened by flashy picture play and bellowing headlines. Last week, Expressen outdid itself, produced 600,000 copies of a 64-page issue, biggest in Scandinavian history.

Spunk & Sparkle. Expressen was an extravert right from its wartime beginnings in neutral Sweden. Bonnier wanted a paper that would back the Allies (only some 20% of Sweden's editors were pro-German at the time), needed an editor with enough spunk and sparkle to put Expressen apart from the rest of the Swedish press, which was generally cast in the sobersided Scandinavian tradition.

On that basis, Bonnier's choice for editor was obvious. Well-born Carl-Adam Nycop, now 49, had been headed for a stuffy life of upper-class responsibility when his fellow junior aristocrats at Sweden's swank Lundsberg boarding school began to mock him as a runt (he is now 5 ft. 7 in.). Nycop was so embittered by the attacks that he rebelled against his convention-bound background, to become a news-and-be-damned reporter. In 1938 he was tapped by Bonnier to start the LiFE-like picture weekly Ssee, soon showed an executive's firm hand for organization, an editor's sure touch for pictures and pithy sentences.

Beat of the Year. Then came Expressen. Nycop hired Sweden's best young newsmen (one impoverished reporter got a set of false teeth as an inducement), gave them lessons in writing simple Swedish (which is not at all simple). He kept his sharp eye out for the big news beat, and on May 7, 1945 he found the biggest of the year—the surrender of Germany, broadcast by Grand Admiral Doenitz and picked up by Expressen's radio monitors. Nycop had been hopefully holding his presses for the news, now says that his Expressen became the world's first paper to carry the story, by rolling out an edition just 22 minutes after the announcement.

Swedes had never seen the like of Nycop's Expressen. Circulation climbed as Nycop championed the underdog (e.g., juvenile delinquents), riled Sweden's neutralist government by urging membership in NATO, gibed at the institution of monarchy. "The monarchy," says Nycop, "is undemocratic. I'm all for King Gustaf. He's a remarkably good executive. But the next one could be an idiot."