Sebastian Mattsson himself worked at Expressen for eight years and was one of the magazine's sharpest click hunters.
Now he has resigned and written a realistic satire, about a cynical media market where the data-driven traffic, the clique, takes precedence over all other values.
- Kalle Klick is completely shameless.
The pageviews he gets when someone clicks on his headline are the only currency he cares about.
He does not care about the usual ideals a reporter usually comes to an editorial office with.
Do not save the world or hold those in power accountable.
He only cares about the click, says Sebastian Mattsson.
A realistic satire
In popular culture, the journalist is often portrayed as a truth-telling and self-sacrificing hero who pulls down the brawls of power.
Or as a vulture who does not let facts get in the way of a good story.
But Sebastian Mattsson lacked a story about the sedentary desk reporter of today, who does not shy away from fooling around and cheating to fish clicks on a newspaper market in constant crisis.
- It's like this: a satire takes up extreme examples, you hand-pick your most extreme experiences, there are no such normal working days in this book.
- But the examples I mention in the book of "distinguished journalism", when he "click-baitar" and "rage-baitar" and everything he does.
It is taken from reality, says Sebastian Mattsson.
Do not want to cry out on TV
Your novel character is incredibly cynical. He makes old abdication. Do you do that, do you distance yourself from this that you yourself have been a part of anyway?
- No, I would not say that.
I'm really not a defector who sits on TV and cries.
I am not a saint, I have done this, I thought it was an interesting thing to portray, says Sebastian Mattsson and adds for safety's sake:
- I am not your Messiah if you believe that.