The printed web
Guest commentary Nowhere is the desire to publish greater than on the Internet. Media companies are trying to profit from the free work of Internet users, writes Nick Lüthi.
Guest commentary Nowhere is the desire to publish greater than on the Internet. Media companies are trying to profit from the free work of Internet users, writes Nick Lüthi.
In principle, it's too late. A look at the classified advertising markets shows that online is ahead, print is lagging behind and is in danger of being left behind completely. Efforts by publishers to stop the exodus of job, car and real estate advertisements with their own platforms are rarely successful; providers from outside the industry have long since taken over with thanks.a different picture for editorial content: Here, paper continues to be regarded as the appropriate medium for journalistic articles of all genres; the Internet remains - at least here in Germany - an often annoying, money-gobbling appendage that at best serves as an advertising window for the associated print product. Neither the situation with classified ads nor with editorial content is satisfactory from a publisher's point of view. But how can paper and pixels be successfully reconciled (commercially)?
"Reverse publishing" is one possible answer. Initial approaches such as Tamedia's partnership with the online vehicle market car4you.ch can already be observed. For six months now, the Zurich-based company has been publishing a used car magazine whose content is automatically generated from the online platform's advertising database. Le Temps predicts a future for the new newspaper as the "new bible of used cars". But even without the superlatives, the Car4you example shows what such a return of online content to print products can look like.
The main motivation for this is, of course, to reduce the editorial workload to an absolute minimum. The advertisements - i.e. the newspaper content - are entered by the car owners themselves; before going to press, only a control glance is cast over the flags, eliminating the need for time-consuming data typing. The Rheinische Post takes a similar approach with its Opinio supplement. Readers write articles on any topic on the newspaper's website, and the best are then published every two weeks as Opinio.
Although the optimization of resources is limited here - the citizen journalists write for free, but around ten editors work for the supplement - this is not the primary focus of the Düsseldorf reverse publishing project. The focus is on reader loyalty. And this seems to be making progress after just a few issues. In any case, the more than 500 registered Opinio writers have already written over 3,000 articles since the launch in February.
The Car4you newspaper and Opinio show one thing above all: the free culture of the Internet, which is often lamented by media companies, can also be used productively. Just as Internet users expect to read the articles of their favorite newspaper on their screens free of charge, they are prepared to make an effort that publishers can convert into cash without paying a fee. A win-win situation? Perhaps. The first attempts at walking on crutches are at least hopeful.
> Nick Lüthi is a media journalist in Bern with many years of online experience.
experience.
In principle, it's too late. A look at the classified advertising markets shows that online is ahead, print is lagging behind and is in danger of being left behind completely. Efforts by publishers to stop the exodus of job, car and real estate advertisements with their own platforms are rarely successful; providers from outside the industry have long since taken over with thanks.a different picture for editorial content: Here, paper continues to be regarded as the appropriate medium for journalistic articles of all genres; the Internet remains - at least here in Germany - an often annoying, money-gobbling appendage that at best serves as an advertising window for the associated print product. Neither the situation with classified ads nor with editorial content is satisfactory from a publisher's point of view. But how can paper and pixels be successfully reconciled (commercially)?
"Reverse publishing" is one possible answer. Initial approaches such as Tamedia's partnership with the online vehicle market car4you.ch can already be observed. For six months now, the Zurich-based company has been publishing a used car magazine whose content is automatically generated from the online platform's advertising database. Le Temps predicts a future for the new newspaper as the "new bible of used cars". But even without the superlatives, the Car4you example shows what such a return of online content to print products can look like.
The main motivation for this is, of course, to reduce the editorial workload to an absolute minimum. The advertisements - i.e. the newspaper content - are entered by the car owners themselves; before going to press, only a control glance is cast over the flags, eliminating the need for time-consuming data typing. The Rheinische Post takes a similar approach with its Opinio supplement. Readers write articles on any topic on the newspaper's website, and the best are then published every two weeks as Opinio.
Although the optimization of resources is limited here - the citizen journalists write for free, but around ten editors work for the supplement - this is not the primary focus of the Düsseldorf reverse publishing project. The focus is on reader loyalty. And this seems to be making progress after just a few issues. In any case, the more than 500 registered Opinio writers have already written over 3,000 articles since the launch in February.
The Car4you newspaper and Opinio show one thing above all: the free culture of the Internet, which is often lamented by media companies, can also be used productively. Just as Internet users expect to read the articles of their favorite newspaper on their screens free of charge, they are prepared to make an effort that publishers can convert into cash without paying a fee. A win-win situation? Perhaps. The first attempts at walking on crutches are at least hopeful.
> Nick Lüthi is a media journalist in Bern with many years of online experience.
experience.
