Editorial fruit presses
Noteworthy: Repurposing as a publishing industry crisis management strategy: Content rationalization is poorly disguised by invoking the «journalistic persona.».
Column Multiple utilization as a way of coping with the publishing crisis: The Theodor Wolff Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in German-language journalism. It goes without saying that the speakers at the award ceremony use flattering holiday prose to talk about the guild. A few days ago, when this year's award winners were honored in Berlin, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees said that newspapers depend above all on the "personalities" of their creators. What a wonderful profession we have, in which people with distinctive individual characteristics are challenged and encouraged. If the laudators are to be believed, subjectivity is just as much a basic resource and requirement in this profession as curiosity, personal interests and independent thinking.
However, the elation after such celebratory speeches has a very limited half-life. Even a glance at the newspapers on the same day as the report on award-worthy journalism was disillusioned again, as it reported on the launch of a new daily newspaper.
The Handelsblatt publishing group, which belongs to the Holtzbrinck Group, wants to attract the "iPod generation" for a daily 10 to 20-minute read with the tabloid-Blatt News. The scope for development given to the personalities of the 20 editors is limited: News primarily processes texts from other Group products such as Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel as well as from the titles of Milchstrasse Verlag. In addition, the News editors plunder weblogs unrestrainedly without even asking the bloggers. In other words, the editorial team of the new paper acts as a content filling machine in a multiple utilization chain.
Holtzbrinck is merely copying what Springer has already done and is now propagating as an innovative example of a publishing crisis management strategy: In the Springer high-rise in Berlin, an editorial team "generates" the material for three daily newspapers: Die Welt, Berliner Morgenpost and Welt Kompakt. The long version with background for the national quality newspaper, shortened for the local paper and rewritten for Welt Kompakt, the company's tabloid.
Like a lemonade with different flavors, content is prepared in this way to suit the target group for products that are primarily intended to occupy every conceivable market niche. This filling of the same material in different containers has been around for a long time, but was previously limited to the tabloid press segment. Now it is also gaining ground in the core journalistic sector.
Economically, this approach probably works. After all, such corporate writing rooms are not only smaller than independent editorial offices. Holtzbrinck's news editors are also consistently underpaid. Behind the smokescreen of the invocation of personalities that characterize the newspaper landscape, a rapid devaluation of journalistic work is taking place, which is also reflected in the high number of unemployed people in the industry. Content is no longer the unmistakable product of individual research, thinking and writing, but the synthetic product of an industrial production process.
This is certainly not entirely new, but it was easier to ignore it in the boom times. It remains to be seen whether readers are even aware of this creeping change. If not, this will probably confirm the theory of the dwindling social significance of our media public sphere.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Germany.
However, the elation after such celebratory speeches has a very limited half-life. Even a glance at the newspapers on the same day as the report on award-worthy journalism was disillusioned again, as it reported on the launch of a new daily newspaper.
The Handelsblatt publishing group, which belongs to the Holtzbrinck Group, wants to attract the "iPod generation" for a daily 10 to 20-minute read with the tabloid-Blatt News. The scope for development given to the personalities of the 20 editors is limited: News primarily processes texts from other Group products such as Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel as well as from the titles of Milchstrasse Verlag. In addition, the News editors plunder weblogs unrestrainedly without even asking the bloggers. In other words, the editorial team of the new paper acts as a content filling machine in a multiple utilization chain.
Holtzbrinck is merely copying what Springer has already done and is now propagating as an innovative example of a publishing crisis management strategy: In the Springer high-rise in Berlin, an editorial team "generates" the material for three daily newspapers: Die Welt, Berliner Morgenpost and Welt Kompakt. The long version with background for the national quality newspaper, shortened for the local paper and rewritten for Welt Kompakt, the company's tabloid.
Like a lemonade with different flavors, content is prepared in this way to suit the target group for products that are primarily intended to occupy every conceivable market niche. This filling of the same material in different containers has been around for a long time, but was previously limited to the tabloid press segment. Now it is also gaining ground in the core journalistic sector.
Economically, this approach probably works. After all, such corporate writing rooms are not only smaller than independent editorial offices. Holtzbrinck's news editors are also consistently underpaid. Behind the smokescreen of the invocation of personalities that characterize the newspaper landscape, a rapid devaluation of journalistic work is taking place, which is also reflected in the high number of unemployed people in the industry. Content is no longer the unmistakable product of individual research, thinking and writing, but the synthetic product of an industrial production process.
This is certainly not entirely new, but it was easier to ignore it in the boom times. It remains to be seen whether readers are even aware of this creeping change. If not, this will probably confirm the theory of the dwindling social significance of our media public sphere.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Germany.
