Karin Pettersson is the political editor-in-chief at Aftonbladet, Scandinavia’s biggest daily newspaper. She is also the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Fokus, Sweden’s leading newsmagazine. During her time at Fokus, the publication won one of Sweden’s most prestigious awards for reinventing political journalism.
At Aftonbladet, she has quadrupled the readership of the editorial page and started a new digital brand for editorial journalism online. Pettersson won the European Newspaper Award for a series about Roma people in Stockholm. She is the 2017 Nieman-Berkman Fellow in Journalism Innovation. The fellowship is a collaboration between the Nieman Foundation and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard and is designed to generate new ideas to advance quality journalism in the digital age. Pettersson is also a Ruth Cowan Nash Nieman Fellow. Nash was best known for her work as an Associated Press war correspondent during World War II.
Pettersson will study how extreme right-wing and racist movements use digital platforms to reach audiences and how this affects the work of traditional media.