Media Group Keskisuomalainen

Media Group Keskisuomalainen is one of Finland’s largest news media companies, specializing in regional news coverage and digital outdoor advertising. With ownership of 75 newspapers across the country, it reaches over 3 million Finns, nearly 71% of the national population.

As part of its digital transformation, Keskisuomalainen invested in mobile technology to consistently deliver value, improve audience engagement, and attract younger readers by providing high-quality digital content. They set out on an ambitious quest to create 22 local news apps – all on one centralized platform. To bring this vision to life, Media Group Keskisuomalainen partnered with two leading Nordic consultancy agencies: Reaktor and Rebel App Studio by Codemate.

Keskisuomalainen set out to create mobile apps that were easy to maintain and featured a consistent design across iOS, Android, and the website. The apps needed to support customizable layouts to reflect each newspaper within the group. Additionally, content had to be cross-publishable under other newspaper brands.

Key priorities included scalability and long-term maintainability, along with delivering a consistent, high-quality user experience.

A key part of the solution was building one unified app structure that allowed for customization per newspaper. Each publication could easily fine-tune its logos, colors, and layouts while maintaining a consistent look and feel aligned with the Keskisuomalainen brand.

Flutter, Google's multiplatform framework, was chosen as the core technology. By using a single codebase for both Android and iOS, development became cost-effective and easy to manage.

Our team took the lead on backend development, contributed to the majority of the application, and supported the design work. The backend unified all publications under one system, simplifying the onboarding of new newspapers through simple configuration and supporting seamless content sharing between different newspapers and brands.

Users can now browse the latest news in multiple formats, from dynamic article views to full digital replicas of the printed newspaper – all directly on their mobiles at the speed of light. Local advertisements are seamlessly integrated, keeping readers informed about upcoming events like community theatre performances and deals from local businesses.

The unified backend architecture enables a small team of just one to three developers to efficiently manage, update, and scale the app while maintaining a high-quality user experience.

The project delivered 22 modern, user-focused mobile applications that offer speed, consistency, and versatility across Keskisuomalainen's newspaper brands. To date, the apps have been downloaded by over 400,000 users. The apps have an incremental role, especially in bringing local news to the screens of younger audiences under the age of 45. 

• Integration of a new application to serve over 400,000 users
• A unified backend to simplify maintenance and enable scalability
• Consistent design across both iOS and Android platforms
• Ability to customize layouts for different publications
• Launching the application across more than 20 publications