Joining forces
Column The Swiss newspaper industry is battling enemies from within its own ranks and new competitors. A look abroad shows alternatives.
Column The Swiss newspaper industry is battling enemies from within its own ranks and new competitors. A look abroad shows alternatives. If you want to keep up to date with who is working with whom against whom in Switzerland, you can't sit back and relax. New initiatives in new constellations are constantly being developed in the houses. Territories are defended or conquered, hostile attackers are fended off or strategically integrated. For industry observers, it is a thoroughly enjoyable spectacle with well-timed dramaturgical twists and exciting adventures, but it is still worth taking a look at another stage from time to time.
BusinessWeek puts William Dean Singleton in the spotlight. The head of the MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest media company in the USA, is known for his ruthlessness and acts as an integrative mediator in California. He got 18 media companies to launch a joint offensive on the web. They formed an alliance among themselves and negotiated a deal with Yahoo that regulates both editorial and advertising cooperation.
But that is not the end of the story for Singleton. Within his own company and in cooperation with other providers, he is trying to form clusters in order to make optimum use of resources and develop new business areas. His next project is to set up a national online marketplace where content and advertising can be presented together. "We have to work together now," Singleton is convinced: "None of the newspaper companies can make it to the other side of the river on their own."
Cooperation within the same group is a top priority at Axel Springer in Berlin. For a year now, the publishing house has been bundling its editorial forces in an integrated newsroom. Newspapers as diverse as Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag, Welt Kompakt and the Berliner Morgenpost as well as various electronic media such as Internet, mobile, videos and podcasts are produced from there. There are 55 workstations in the newsroom, and the people responsible for the various publications sit at an editor-in-chief's desk. More than 400 journalists work in the editorial pool. They are no longer divided between the various products, but work in thematic groups. The basic principle is: online first. Nevertheless, the journalists can also concentrate on working on a newspaper text if necessary.
According to the editorial managers, the concept has proven itself. Coordination with the respective journalistic profiles is also not a problem. And as there are few double users, readers are not bothered by the multiple uses. The journalist teams plan the thematic preparation of events together. Margaret Heckel, Head of the Politics Department, explained during a recent visit to Berlin that this would strengthen journalistic performance overall. The journalistic potential of the topics would be better exploited. All titles would benefit from this.
The Derwesten.de web portal launched on October 29 by the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) publishing group does not yet have any experience to fall back on. It combines the websites of five newspaper titles and contains news from 140 cities. The editor-in-chief is Katharina Borchert, who has made a name for herself as the blogger Lyssa. Her 22-strong editorial team can draw on local and regional news from around 800 editors. Around 900 have been retrained in the new editorial system, which is technically based on the input masks of the blogs. The West bundles all articles on a topic independently of the respective newspaper titles.
The online first principle does not apply here. The editorial team decides independently on the placement of the news after consultation. Journalism is specifically supplemented here with all the possibilities of Web 2.0. Geotagging is also used to link content with navigation via maps. Strength is demonstrated together. The publisher proudly announces: "Der Westen is the most comprehensive regional online portal in Germany."
Together we are strong is the solution everywhere. In Switzerland, the sense of community in the houses and among the houses is only just growing and is mostly still fragile. So we can look forward to further interesting twists and turns. When it comes to the question of who is an ally and who is a competitor, many a gentleman will be in for further surprises.
> Josefa Haas is Head of the Media Institute
BusinessWeek puts William Dean Singleton in the spotlight. The head of the MediaNews Group, the fourth-largest media company in the USA, is known for his ruthlessness and acts as an integrative mediator in California. He got 18 media companies to launch a joint offensive on the web. They formed an alliance among themselves and negotiated a deal with Yahoo that regulates both editorial and advertising cooperation.
But that is not the end of the story for Singleton. Within his own company and in cooperation with other providers, he is trying to form clusters in order to make optimum use of resources and develop new business areas. His next project is to set up a national online marketplace where content and advertising can be presented together. "We have to work together now," Singleton is convinced: "None of the newspaper companies can make it to the other side of the river on their own."
Cooperation within the same group is a top priority at Axel Springer in Berlin. For a year now, the publishing house has been bundling its editorial forces in an integrated newsroom. Newspapers as diverse as Die Welt, Welt am Sonntag, Welt Kompakt and the Berliner Morgenpost as well as various electronic media such as Internet, mobile, videos and podcasts are produced from there. There are 55 workstations in the newsroom, and the people responsible for the various publications sit at an editor-in-chief's desk. More than 400 journalists work in the editorial pool. They are no longer divided between the various products, but work in thematic groups. The basic principle is: online first. Nevertheless, the journalists can also concentrate on working on a newspaper text if necessary.
According to the editorial managers, the concept has proven itself. Coordination with the respective journalistic profiles is also not a problem. And as there are few double users, readers are not bothered by the multiple uses. The journalist teams plan the thematic preparation of events together. Margaret Heckel, Head of the Politics Department, explained during a recent visit to Berlin that this would strengthen journalistic performance overall. The journalistic potential of the topics would be better exploited. All titles would benefit from this.
The Derwesten.de web portal launched on October 29 by the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ) publishing group does not yet have any experience to fall back on. It combines the websites of five newspaper titles and contains news from 140 cities. The editor-in-chief is Katharina Borchert, who has made a name for herself as the blogger Lyssa. Her 22-strong editorial team can draw on local and regional news from around 800 editors. Around 900 have been retrained in the new editorial system, which is technically based on the input masks of the blogs. The West bundles all articles on a topic independently of the respective newspaper titles.
The online first principle does not apply here. The editorial team decides independently on the placement of the news after consultation. Journalism is specifically supplemented here with all the possibilities of Web 2.0. Geotagging is also used to link content with navigation via maps. Strength is demonstrated together. The publisher proudly announces: "Der Westen is the most comprehensive regional online portal in Germany."
Together we are strong is the solution everywhere. In Switzerland, the sense of community in the houses and among the houses is only just growing and is mostly still fragile. So we can look forward to further interesting twists and turns. When it comes to the question of who is an ally and who is a competitor, many a gentleman will be in for further surprises.
> Josefa Haas is Head of the Media Institute
