From threat to asset: How a publisher in Greenland created its own AI tool, unlocked a treasure trove of its own content, and drove subscriptions in the process.
You are reading the third instalment of our Digital Subscription Series.
As publishers we can be forgiven for fearing AI as it ushers in job losses, quality degradation, and the commodification of content. It’s refreshing, then, to see Sermitsiaq, a Greenlandic news publisher, which has trained its own AI model to unlock the hidden wealth of its own content.. By training an AI translation model on its own archives the paper has cut administrative costs, opened up new ways to reach audiences, and created a new revenue stream and subscription incentive.
Upgrade Media talked to Masaana Egede, CEO and Editor in Chief of Sermitsiaq. Then we went to Lars Damgaard Nielsen, Co-founder and CEO of MediaCatch, the company that did the development work for the publisher, and asked how other publishers might benefit from the same approach.
The Translation Challenge
The official language of Greenland is Danish, with English widely spoken, but the native language is Kalaallisut, which belongs to the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan family; but you knew that already, right? Ok, be honest, you didn’t know that, you’ve never even heard of Kalaallisut (which from here on we will call Greenlandic, for simplicity’s sake), and right now you can’t see why that matters to your publishing business. Which is precisely why you should read on.
For a publisher serving Greenland’s bilingual population, translation has always been central to the mission: and expensive. “We publish one hundred percent of everything in Greenlandic and Danish,” Masaana explains. “That is expensive, so for decades we used humans, which is quality, but you need resources.”
The linguistic landscape of Greenland creates unique pressures. “The school system is very much Danish, even though we’re in Greenland, so people are taught to write both in preschool then in high school, and it’s harder from there to maintain knowledge in Greenlandic. You finish school, get a job, get into business, and from there you speak Danish. That has been a thing for many years, so editors have been Danish.”
This dynamic meant that Danish language content typically came first. “When journalists write, they do so in Danish”. The resulting workflow created delays for Greenlandic language publication, which made the whole process not only costly but time-consuming.
Building a future on long forgotten, legacy assets
The breakthrough came from recognizing the value of the organization’s own archives. With newspapers dating to the 1800s for one publication and 1958 for another, the publisher possessed something rare: “We have two newspapers in Greenland in both languages… so we have perfectly translated content. It’s quality content for an AI, and that creates a very good translator.”
This dormant content; decades of professionally translated journalism, proved to be the critical asset. “It’s our original, high quality content” the publisher emphasizes.
Defying received wisdom
“The funny thing is it’s only three years ago it was not possible to have a [machine] translator because Greenlandic is so far from Danish,” Masaana recalls. “Experts said loudly…
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