Trends

Newspaper publishers in Germany are always on the look out for new products which will help them gain ground in the fight for readers and advertisers. The latest trend is for daily newspapers which are just 24 cm by 42 cm. The handy format and punchy stories aim to attract young readers in particular.

"Newspaper to go", newspapers for the "i-Pod generation" – publishers Axel Springer and Georg von Holtzbrinck use such slogans to advertise their latest products. A good year ago Springer launched Welt kompakt, a daily newspaper in tabloid format. The Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group and the Handelsblatt publishing group also brought out small-sized papers, with 20 Cent in Cottbus and news in the Frankfurt area respectively. In Cologne the publishing house DuMont Schauberg responded to the latest trend from the UK and has been selling the Kölner Stadtanzeiger Direkt since last year.

What these mini-newspapers have in common is that they offer readers who do not have the time to wade through a whole newspaper a compact overview of the news. The tabloid formats are under 30 pages long and cannot fit much more than the headlines from politics, the economy, the arts and local news. These information appetizers are enough for many readers who just want to inform themselves quickly about the day’s most important news while they’re on the train, at the bus stop, between two appointments or during a lunch break.

Targeting young readers in particular

So if you’re looking for detailed background reports, analyses or intellectually-stimulating feuilleton pages, then the tabloid-sized papers are not for you. "Tabloid formats are geared towards people who didn’t read papers before", explains Horst Röper, who monitors the German and international media landscape in his media thinktank, Formatt Institute in Dortmund. "They are very practical, especially because they don’t have that many pages. That attracts many readers. Smaller articles surrounded by more illustrative elements signalise on first glance: That is a colourful, upbeat paper that doesn’t take up a lot of my time".

By streamlining content and using modern presentation techniques – illustrative graphics and clearly laid out boxes – the publishing houses are trying to tap into new reader circles and in particular reach the 18 - 35 age group, which is particularly attractive for advertising clients. But they will need more than a make-over to do that. The Internet or "i-Pod" generation is used to getting information fast and free, so the tabloid formats are suitably cheap: Welt kompakt, Köln direct and news all cost 50 cents and the Cottbuss paper, as the name says, costs just 20 cents.

The concept seems to be paying off. Although the publishers haven’t released any official circulation figures yet, 20,000 copies of 20 Cent, for example, are printed every day. The matching Internet site also gets a lot of visitors, partly thanks to the lonely hearts section: instead of a culture section, 20 cents offers a dating website. The paper, "is the right product for someone who likes to go to concerts, parties and discos and is looking for a partner. It is not suitable for someone who likes to sleep in their own bed", says Peter Stefan Herbst, the man in charge of the paper.

A trend from Great Britain

The idea for the German tabloid formats came from the UK, where the dwarf newspapers have shaken up the market. In Great Britain the word "tabloid" is generally used to refer to the popular press, which have a different format to the serious broadsheets. But 2 years ago, when the conventional British newspaper The Independent departed from the broadsheet format and was published in tabloid size, it was seen as a true revolution at the British newspaper stands. The circulation of the paper rose by a full 15 percent. Now the Saturday edition of London’s The Times appears in tabloid format and The Guardian plans to launch the paper in the smaller form this year as well. Tabloid formats are also being designed in the Benelux and Scandinavia.

However, the situation in the UK cannot be applied to Germany on a one-to-one basis: the German tabloid-sized papers are not daily newspapers in their own right, but rather spin-offs of long-established newspapers based on the same content. For example, the national daily Die Welt is behind Springer’s Welt kompakt, the Kölner Stadtanzeiger is behind Köln direct and 20 Cent is made up of contributions from the East Brandenburg paper, Lausitzer Rundschau. Although news has its own editing department, it also contains articles from Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche and other magazines from the Milchstraße publishing group like TV Spielfilm and Fit for Fun.

So despite encouraging signs, the German newspaper publishers don’t seem to trust their new products on the market on their own yet. Production investment and costs are kept to a minimum. Other German publishing houses even view the tabloid formats with scepticism: "I don’t think you can import the British experience to the German market so easily", says Berthold Kohler, publisher of the FAZ, for example. For the FAZ there is no question of a change in format. Moreover, as long as the small-sized papers have a "big brother" to watch out for them, and a repertoire they can help themselves to, they will not be able to replace the regular newspapers.