Naja Nielsen, digital director of BBC News, is leaving the BBC to take up a position as media director of Swedish public broadcaster SVT. In her new role, she will be responsible for SVT’s digital services and publishing strategies. The position also includes analysis and data, as well as overall responsibility for AI at SVT.
Nielsen joined the BBC in 2019. In her role as digital director, she has led BBC News’ digital journalism through the pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Gaza war and UK & US elections, putting digital and streaming at the heart of BBC News.
BBC News CEO Deborah Turness said: “Naja’s impact on BBC News is hard to overstate. She has led the transformation of our digital offer, passionately pioneered live pages and streaming, and put data at the heart of our decision making. Naja has led our social teams to make BBC News a force on social platforms where we are targeting young audiences – first building scale on Instagram where BBC News is the biggest global news brand, and then on TikTok where we’ve grown followers 65% in the last year and are the second largest UK news account.”
During her time at the BBC, Nielsen has launched live streams; the improved BBC News app; digital election formats focused on voters; newsletters; local news rails and push alerts; vertical video; BBC News on Tik Tok; BBC InDepth and much more.
Turness added: “Her rich experience and expertise were formed both by her time spent in the US, where she immersed herself in Silicon Valley and the big tech companies’ ways of working, and in the innovative Scandinavian news market. That unique combination positioned Naja to be a courageous leader who has championed our digital investments and accelerated the pace of change.”
Nielsen was previously chief journalism officer at Orb Media, a digital investigative start-up in Washington DC. In 2014 Naja was a visiting scholar at Stanford University, studying what legacy media should learn from the tech industry.
