Even Aas-Eng has sold Filter Nyheter and Josimar. The investments have been a financial sinkhole.

For ten years, Even Aas-Eng was the largest shareholder in Filter Nyheter. It has cost him many millions of kroner.

Last year, Aas-Eng attempted to find a new home for Filter Nyheter and the football magazine Josimar. The response he received was very different from what he had envisaged, writes Journalisten. Interest was lukewarm for a while, but Aas-Eng has now found a buyer.

Aas-Eng also held ownership stakes in the now-defunct Natt&Dag.

– I was a bit shocked.

– We call it a merger, but technically they are buying the shares in Mainstream Media Norge AS, says Aas-Eng.

It is the Bergen-based Skavl Media that, through its subsidiary Nisjemedier AS, is taking over the parent company of Filter and Josimar. The acquisition was first reported by Medier24.

Aas-Eng has evidently not lost faith in Filter Nyheter and Josimar, since he has reinvested the entire purchase price in the new parent company.

Together with his wife and Lars Eide, who is publisher of the publications that have now been sold, Aas-Eng owned approximately 97 per cent of the shares in Mainstream Media at the time of the sale.

Eide has worked at Filter since before Filter Nyheter became a reality. He will now continue as managing editor of the online newspaper.

Document has on several occasions come into conflict with Klungtveit. At the Bannon meeting in 2019, he gained access to the venue even though he was not named on any press accreditation and began taking photographs of the audience before being stopped. Later, there was an incident in which he hid behind a bush with a giant camera.

Filter Nyheter began publishing in 2016 and invested heavily in content marketing.

What distinguished Filter from the others was that the newspaper itself was to be advertisement-free. The advertisements were published on Filter Partner and distributed through social media, detached from the news site itself.

Klungtveit opposed the concept, but the online newspaper generated strong advertising revenues in its second year. Then conditions became more difficult, and the financial success failed to materialise thereafter.

– First there was intense competition from the other major media outlets, which integrated content marketing into their own sites, and then content marketing was largely replaced by good old-fashioned advertising on social media, says Aas-Eng.

Seven of the ten years have ended with losses in the accounts, and in several years the deficits amounted to millions of kroner. The investor admits that he has lost millions of kroner.

However, he says he has greatly appreciated being involved in creating a media outlet that has focused on writing about “Nazis and the far right – and Russian intelligence and FIFA”.

– Being involved in a project that you know annoys the hell out of some of the people on the Norwegian right whom I have the least respect for is satisfying.