Published April 13, 2026

Media research in the past decade has established that feedback online, first from clicks, then from social media interaction, has formed the agenda-setting of editorial boards across the globe. This has been going on for so long now that it now looks like the editorial staff of most media outlets in Iceland at least, don’t even comprehend any more that the agenda-setting —  what stories to emphasise, what discourse to uphold —  is their job. Instead, be it consciously or not, editorial agenda-setting has been ceded to the algorithms. On top of that, because these are easier to write and more likely to be viral, Icelandic media mostly puts out updates on ongoing stories, while leaving the tedious work of compiling, explaining and contextualising the news out in the cold. 

This is far from what the purpose of newsrooms was conceived as. Not only that, there are indicators that readers actually don’t want the stuff they are being fed this way. According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025, readers want the news media to “provide depth rather than chasing algorithms for clicks.”  

This magazine saw exactly this materialise in our last cover feature on recently deceased former Prime Minister Davíð Oddsson, probably the most consequential politician in Iceland’s modern history. Twenty years ago, such an article would have been an input into a discourse on his legacy. So far, it is the only article in the Icelandic media that tries to come to terms with the man’s legacy. The article did nothing on social media platforms, yet it was our most-read article in the past month. 

To this publication, it is a reminder that journalists have a duty to set agendas and not cede that to unseen, undisclosed algorithms of gigantic tech companies, not only because those algorithms serve the business models of said companies, not the readers, but also because those algorithms do not seem to be aligned any more — if they ever were — with what readers really want, not to mention need.  

Wait, this was supposed to be about the 10 cutest waterfalls in Iceland.