Text and photo: Clara Fors Wisbyse
BORÅS • The media leader of the year 2024, Lena Kvist, knows how to celebrate good work and award nominations. Her team of all-female investigative reporters always celebrate the end of an investigation.
“Once we were out celebrating a story and at the table beside us sat a fairly angry entrepreneur from an earlier investigation,” she says.
The metallic beep from someone entering a small safe pierces through the back of the big editorial room. When the door swings open, Lena Kvist, the investigative editor at Borås Newspaper, points to the down right corner: “There it is, we should probably find a time to pop it,” she says.
The investigative group of three women at Borås Newspaper have just finished yet another investigation. At the bottom of the safe is their reward: A lukewarm orange prosecco bottle.
“We are good at celebrating our investigations,” Lena Kvist had said just a few moments earlier.
“Is that a female thing?,” she questions before concluding that it probably isn’t.
According to Kvist they are the only all-female investigative team in Sweden. That’s also why the three journalists, Lena Kvist, Anne Bengtsson and Jennie Östlund have landed a nomination for the award “Pennskaftspriset”.
The safe at Borås Newspaper.
Kvist explains how nice it felt to get the nomination. She describes investigative journalism as very male-coded in the beginning of her career.
“It was tough. There was a lone-male-investigative-journalist kind of attitude,” she explains.
When graduating journalism school in Gothenburg in 1994, she landed herself an internship position as an investigative reporter.
“Nils Hanson, who then worked at The Gothenburg Post, had me as an intern,” she says.
In 2005 to 2006 she also worked with him as a researcher at Mission Investigate. Little did she know at the time that she would end up working with local journalism in her hometown Borås. She became the head of culture and entertainment in 2011 at Borås Newspaper and 14 years later she is still there, but now in the back of the room with her two investigating colleagues.
“A journalist reporting on culture is very popular among the public and invited to write, whereas it’s completely different for an investigative reporter. No one wants you there,” she says with a smile.
Anne Bengtsson, Jennie Östlund and Lena Kvist.
Since 2021 she has been overseeing several investigative projects and her personal favourite is the first big one she and her team did. They exposed a moving company built upon fraud.
“We were so much further than the police and we found something that Borås had never experienced before,” she says.
Her own byline is often spotted among the texts and she admits that even though she does write some texts, it also has another purpose:
“Sometimes we add several bylines for security reasons.”
As the former head of the publicist association of West Sweden, Kvist has been outspoken in the media about threats against journalists and she believes that it has increased during the last couple of years.
“Once we were out celebrating a story and at the table beside us sat a fairly angry entrepreneur from an earlier investigation. That’s how it is in a smaller city,” she explains.
Last year, it was not only the team that had reason to celebrate and pop prosecco bottles. In 2024 the organisation “Tidningsutgivarna” awarded Lena Kvist with the prize “Media leader of the year” for leading five investigations nominated to, and one winning, the prestigious Swedish prize “The golden shovel”.
“I am not often choosing to be on stage, but when I was I did the best of those seconds,” she says with a smile.
Facts: Lena Kvist
From: Borås but has lived in Gothenburg since early 1990s.
Other commitments: Member of the jury electing the winner of “the golden shovel”
Dream investigation: “To investigate big companies in Borås more would be interesting. Everyone also wants a really good trustworthy source with secret information.”