Tav Klitgaard: How Zetland turned a newsroom problem into a global AI business

About this episode

Tav Klitgaard discusses how Zetland transformed a newsroom challenge into the successful AI product GoodTape.

This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy is joined by Tav Klitgaard, the CEO of the Danish newsroom Zetland, to unpack the origin story of GoodTape — an AI transcription tool that began as an internal newsroom solution and evolved into a profitable, global product used far beyond journalism. Zetland is an audio-first newsroom in Denmark. But GoodTape wasn’t born from an AI strategy or a product roadmap. It emerged from a familiar newsroom pain point of journalists spending hours transcribing interviews, with existing tools falling short, especially in non-English languages like Danish. In this conversation, Tav breaks down how GoodTape went from an internal experiment to a standalone, subscription-based product that quickly became profitable, generated millions in revenue and was eventually divested. He also shares what building GoodTape taught Zetland about AI adoption, organizational learning, and where newsrooms should, and shouldn’t, use generative AI. This episode covers: 05:50 – How a prototype using OpenAI’s Whisper sparked GoodTape 08:36 – The moment Zetland realized GoodTape could be a real product 12:34 – How journalism’s trust and privacy standards became a…

People in this episode

Host: Nikita Roy

Guest: Tav Klitgaard

Topics covered

• AI in journalism
• transcription technology
• newsroom innovation
• organizational learning
• generative AI

Keywords

• AI transcription
• GoodTape
• Zetland
• journalism
• OpenAI
• audio-first newsroom
• profitability
• generative AI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Zetland, OpenAI

Products: GoodTape

Places: Denmark

More episodes of Newsroom Robots

• Kevin Delaney & Jim Friedlich: How The San Francisco Standard is Reinventing the News App · May 30, 2026 · 58 min
• Kati Erwert & Tristan Loper: How The Seattle Times uses AI to drive revenue in local news · April 12, 2026 · 58 min
• Kat Downs Mulder: Inside Yahoo’s AI Strategy for the Future of News · March 13, 2026 · 46 min
• CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and Hacks/Hackers on AI in the Newsroom: In Conversation with Arlyn Gajilan, Burt Herman, Ryan Struyk and Rubina Madan Fillion · March 2, 2026 · 43 min
• Uli Köppen: How Bavarian Broadcasting is preparing for an AI-mediated future where trusted content wins · March 2, 2026 · 47 min
• Melissa Bell, Aron Pilhofer, Mark Chonofsky & David Chivers: Chicago Public Media on Building AI Tools That Serve the Audience · January 27, 2026 · 48 min