Fokus (magazine)

Fokus

cover of the March 8–14, 2013 issue, featuring politician Filippa Reinfeldt
Editor-in-chief	Johan Hakelius
Categories	Current affairs, news and culture
Frequency	weekly
Circulation	31,000
Founder	Martin Ahlquist, Martin Ådahl, Lars Grafström and Karin Pettersson
First issue	December 2005 (2005-12)
Company	FPG Media AB
Country	Sweden
Based in	12 Wallingatan 111 60 Sweden
Language	Swedish
Website	www.fokus.se
ISSN	1653-4670
OCLC number	85895055

Fokus is a Swedish-language weekly news and current affairs magazine. It was founded by Martin Ahlquist, Lars Grafström, Karin Pettersson and Martin Ådahl. Its first publishing was in December 2005. In 2007, it was awarded the Swedish Publicists' Association's grand prize. The magazine publishes 41 issues per year and has a circulation of approximately 31,000.Fokus is editorially politically unbound. The magazine is owned and published by FPG Media, a Swedish limited company.

Fokus was founded in 2005 by Martin Ahlquist, Martin Ådahl, Lars Grafström and Karin Pettersson. Their ambition was to create a Swedish magazine equivalent of Time or Newsweek. In search for a financier for the magazine they turned to the chairman of the Ax:son Johnson investment company Nordstjernan and former editor-in-chief of Veckans Affärer, Johan Björkman. After much convincing, Björkman, agreed to finance Fokus through Nordstjernan. In mid-2005, the company FPG Media was formed to manage Fokus and the founders began recruiting journalists. A few months later the first issue of Fokus was published on Friday December 2, 2005.

When the founders plans for Fokus were announced many lauded the project as an interesting idea, but at the same time most analysts declared it doomed to fail. Sweden was seen as too small a country for a weekly news magazine. It would be hard to build an audience, when the Swedish daily newspapers already were very strong and of good quality. Furthermore, the high rate of English proficiency among the target Swedish audience would mean that the magazine would have to compete with well established English-language newsmagazines.

The magazine is owned and published by FPG Media, a Swedish limited company (aktiebolag), where the major share holders are Nordstjernan, the Johan Björkman Foundation, and Tagehus. These companies are in turn mainly controlled and owned by the prominent Swedish business family Ax:son Johnson.

In March 2013, the trade magazine Resumé reported that despite increasing circulation Fokus had made a projected loss of approximately 88 million SEK from 2005 until 2012. However, Viveca Ax:son Johnson, the chairwoman of Nordstjernan, commented that they were committed to Fokus for a much longer time than seven years. Together with the culture and science television station Axess TV, the magazine is seen as a prestige project for the Ax:son Johnson family, and they are prepared to invest money in it from other sectors of their business empire.