Expressen Turns 70

November 16 was no ordinary day for Expressen. The day marked 70 years since the very first copy hit the newsstands. The first copy, in keeping with the paper’s anti-Nazi origins, featured a cover story about six British pilots who’d sunk a Nazi battleship and landed in northern Sweden before making their way by night train to Stockholm and the British Embassy. (You can read a full copy of the first issue of Expressen here – in Swedish of course!)

“We celebrated the 70 years at the paper already on Friday, inviting in 96-year-old Svante Löfgren, who started at Expressen in 1949 and was a correspondent in Berlin, Bonn, Los Angeles and Geneva,” says Thomas Mattsson, editor-in-chief. “Svante is known most for his global scoop from 1953, when he interviewed Ho Chi Minh via telegram – he received a long applause from his colleagues at the paper. I wanted Svante there as a reminder of the newspaper’s heritage, and it came off beautifully.”

The paper also had other reasons to celebrate, with a new record on its mobile site, with an increase in traffic of 114 percent with over 3.5 million unique readers. “It was fun that the mobile site, our biggest channel, had record traffic the same week we turned 70,” says Mattsson.

You can read more articles from the early years of Expressen here, here and here (in Swedish). And in his blog, Mattsson pays tribute to a long list of reporters, photographers, editors and scoops from Expressen over the years – check it out here (in Swedish).