Publishing Houses and Publishers

More and more newspaper readers are drifting away to the Internet. Media habits are changing and the market must respond to new reading tendencies. But now the trend is again away from “online first”. The press is banking increasingly on “cross-media”.

According to a current study, 42.22 million Germans use the Net; that corresponds to two-thirds of the resident population over fourteen years of age. Among the sites visited are many newsportals. Online the latest information appears not only faster, but also often free of charge.

In recent months newsportals have registered a record of hits. Occupying place number one is Spiegel Online with three million users weekly and an increase of 38 per cent over last year, followed by Bild.de and Focus-online. The newspaper market must respond to constantly changing reading and communication habits, especially those of young people.

Online as “part of the family”

According to the experts, the recipe for the future is called “cross-media”, which means bringing together information from diverse media under one umbrella brand. The goal is a good and harmonious interplay of classical forms of distribution such as print, radio or television with the Internet. In times of newspaper crisis and structural change, many publishers are banking on this double strategy and developing their Internet presence.

“Here, online is part of the family”, explains Hans-Jürgen Jakobs, chief editor of sueddeutsche.de. The present situation also offers the well-known daily newspaper an opportunity for revitalisation by calling it back to its strengths, such as analysis and background reporting.

Two sides of the same coin

But the practical implementation of cross-media is difficult. Opinions differs about the right strategy. Another problem is set ways of thought and stubborn prejudices. The online editor still stands in the shadow of his print colleagues, and the electronic press is still generally regarded as superficial and second-class. But print and online are actually two sides of the same coin, which have to be joined to one another. It is not a question of a poor imitation of a newspaper on the Net, but rather of developing a complementary media culture.

On the one hand, this means background, comprehensive analyses, informed reporting, but also “decelerated” reading for pleasure. On the other hand, it means latest-breaking news, if need be by the minute, archiving, multi-media and connections to external web sites that lead the reader back to his starting-point by reciprocal links. Embedded videos are intended to reach the young public, which may then find its way to the newspaper.

“As a supplement to print, videos are an ideal way of bringing information to readers that doesn’t come across in a text”, explained Managing Director of DuMontNet, Silke Springensgut, at the October 2008 “Medientagen” in Munich. The demand in the area of sports, she noted, is particularly strong.

Editorial departments in a state of flux

Darmstadt journalism professor Klaus Meier sees the danger that print editors who have the job of supplying online platforms may regard this as an annoying duty. “If various media are to be serviced centrally, you need a strong platform manager”, said the expert on newsroom concepts to the daily newspaper taz. Only in this way, he thought, “can the profile of individual platforms be preserved”.

For Meier, it is therefore important that publishers keep all the material in view. The publishers of Spiegel have adopted this approach: they have had an online coordinator since June 2009, and in autumn the first editor for both media goes on duty. This will prevent, according to the publisher, “self-cannibalising” between the online and print editions. In this arrangement the printed version of Spiegel will be clearly to the fore. Hans-Jürgen Jakobs of Sueddeutsche.de also thinks little of the principle of “online first” favoured by many newspapers, in accordance with which an article appears at the portal before it is published in the print edition. “Journalism first” is his credo; “One brand, two media”.

Newsroom or not newsroom?

The Frankfurter Rundschau, too, is banking on an “integrated concept” that has editors working together in a common newsroom where both the Internet and print editions are prepared. A special online team, however, continues to select the material and supervise the practical implementation.

The chief editor of Zeit.de, Wolfgang Blau, on the other hand, rejects the idea of such a newsroom. He prefers to draw particularly his news themes from the online editorial department. In case of doubt, however, it is more important for him to have a good text that can also be read at the affiliated portal tagesspiegel.de than to populate his site with ticker texts that can be found at many other portals.

Searching for the best way

Germany’s third largest publisher, the WAZ Media Group, with headquarters in Essen, adheres to a centralised online concept. A common Content Desk supplies the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), Neue Ruhr/Neue Rhein Zeitung (NRZ), Westfälische Rundschau (WR) and the online portal Derwesten.de

So editorial departments are going their separate ways. At present, many online sites resemble experimental laboratories; no one seems to have yet found the best way. Only time will tell which model will succeed.