The Friday edition of left-leaning Information newspaper looks just like any other day’s but its editorial process was quite different. Instead of putting the paper together with the work of staff journalists, Information handed the controls over to a team of 12 refugees. 

 

Information’s editor-in-chief Christian Jensen said that the newspaper wanted to give a voice to those we hear from “only rarely and sporadically”.

 

“They are numbers in a statistic and they are extras in a political debate that must often feel foreign to them. We all talk about refugees, but today it is the refugees who talk to us in a special edition of Information,” he wrote. 

 

In the run-up to the release of Friday’s special edition, Information’s regular journalists and editors took to social media to criticize Integration Minister Inger Støjberg for her failure to respond to interview requests from the refugee team. Jensen doubled down on that criticism in Friday’s newspaper. 

 

“For politicians, refugees are just a problem that should be solved as quickly as possible and the majority prefer to do it without having to look them in the eyes. This includes Integration Minister Inger Støjberg, who despite ten days’ notice was unable to find the time to be interviewed by the editorial staff,” he wrote. 

 

Information’s special edition was written by refugees from Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, Kenya, Thailand and Iraqi Kurdistan. Some are new arrivals to Denmark while others have been in the country for years. 

 

The special edition is available electronically here.  

 

Information was created by the Danish resistance movement during World War 2. It is one of Denmark's smallest daily papers with a circulation of just under 20,000.