Stig Fredriksson, a Swedish newspaper industry leader, received the EMMA Award 2007. The award was handed over at the 5th Annual EMMA Conference in Zurich. EMMA, the European Media Management Education Association, wanted to recognize private support of Media Management and Media Economics research and teaching with this prize.
The association stated: “Mr. Stig Fredriksson, his family and his newspaper industry group are the foremost private supporters in Sweden and presumably in the whole of Europe of research and education in media economics. A prominent example of this support is the Media Management and Transformation Centre in Jönköpping, which is financed by the family’s foundations. Its influence on the development of media business research in Europe cannot be overestimated.”
Prof. Karl Erik Gustaffson, Jönköping, explained the election of Mr. Fredriksson as follows: “Mr. Fredriksson was educated at Lund University and took his bachelor degree in sociology in 1961. He worked at the department of sociology in Lund as research assistant 1961-1963. From 1964-1967 he taught journalism for consumers at the Stockholm School of Journalism. In positions as consultant and first research engineer he joined the Swedish Defence Research Agency where he finished his academic career. In 1969 he defended a licentiate thesis in sociology in 1969. In 1970 Mr. Fredriksson was appointed editor-in -chief of Jönköpings-Posten, a leading daily and main paper in a chain of local newspapers around Jönköping. At the same time he became CEO of the group. During the 1970s when the debate on private ownership of media was intensive in Sweden, as a precautionary measure, he invested into the tin packing industry in Sweden and abroad. The Herenco Industries, as the conglomerate was called, established two foundations to support mass media research, one general, Carl-Olof and Jenz Hamrin Foundation, and one particularly for local media studies, Herenco Research Foundation for Local Media Studies.
In the middle of the 1980s Mr. Fredriksson approached the School of Economics in Göteborg indicating that the Hamrin Foundation was prepared to finance a chair in mass media economics. That School was the only one in Sweden at that time with a research unit in media economics, established in 1978. However, it took some time to get the formal decisions necessary, but in 1989 the chair of mass media economics was in place with additional resources. It was only seven years after the first chair in mass media research was established (also in Göteborg) but financed by the state. Thus, the first chair of mass media economics was privately financed, and that by the Hamrin Foundation.
Besides, the Hamrin Foundation regularly supported a number of big research projects on mass media. It became for instance the main sponsor of a four volume work on the Swedish press history, an interdisciplinary research project with twelve leading Swedish press researchers participating. The foundation for local media studies stimulated research in that field and a better balance was created between national and local media studies in Sweden.
When a research centre for Media Economics at the Institute of Business Economics in Oslo, financed by commissioned research, met with financial problems, the Carl-Olof and Jenz Hamrin Foundation decided to finance the chair of the centre for three years, 1998-2000.
After the turn o the century, the Hamrin Foundation made possible a reorganization of research and education in media economics in Sweden, by concentrating its support to Jönköping, at Jönköping International Business School, JIBS. The chair in Göteborg moved to Jönköping, and a new one was created there. These were put together in a new centre, staffed with other senior researchers, as well as doctoral students and a secretariat. The centre was founded in 2003 and called Media Management and Transformation Centre, MMTC. The Hamrin Foundation committed itself for a five-year period of financing of the centre as a whole, 2003-2008. Recently the commitment was prolonged for a second five-year period, 2008-2012.
The great and sustainable support from the end of 1980s given to research and education in media economics is unique in Sweden and to the best of our knowledge in Europe as a whole. It can be explained, firstly, by the unique combination of competences united in Mr Stig Fredriksson as a skilled scholar, teacher and researcher, and a successful newspaper publisher and industrialist, and secondly, by the genuine and consistent support by the whole Fredriksson-Hamrin family.”