WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

As you can see from our collection of Real Newsrooms, newspapers all over the world are changing or in need of change very much.

But to see how different our working conditions are, you need to see how our newsrooms were a few years ago.

Welome to our Old Newsroom collection.

And please send us your pictures.

Let’s start with these:

The News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina (USA) circa 1934.

The Buffalo Evening News circa 1950s

The Daily Oklahoman newsroom in 1953

According to the latest data, two years after it began, QUE! is the leading free newspaper in Spain.

The new ranking for free papers (PGD):

1. QUE! 963.604

2. 20 MINUTOS 963.420

3. ADN 910.225

4. METRO 787.681

The ranking for paid papers (OJD):

1. EL PAIS 432.204

2. EL MUNDO 330.280

3. ABC 240.225

4. LA VANGUARDIA 102.117

QUE! has 13 editions, 150 journalists and 1.876.000 readers (EGM).

Its two main owners are Recoletos and Grupo Godo.

These amazing figures show that there is no space for four free national papers in Spain.

And METRO could be the first casualty is this war.

In his blog, Rob Curley announces:

I’m kind of excited for my next post because it will be about our team’s first big project here at washingtonpost.com, which we hope to launch on Feb. 7.

I can tell you this — it’s a video project

Blacke Fleetwood reports:

Readership at NYTimes.com rose 21% over the last year to 13 million viewers monthly, while visitors to the Washington Post Web site decreased 2%

The overall unique audience of the top newspaper blogs is 66% male and 34% female, according to a new study by Nielsen Net Ratings.

Traffic to newspaper web sites – 60% male and 40% female – grew by 9%, while traffic to newspaper blogs grew by 210%.

Male traffic to blogs grew by 226% Year over Year in December, while female traffic to blogs grew by 183%.

And the gap between the sexes seems to be widening.

Nielsen said, “Males tend to be both early adopters of new technologies and avid consumers of news.”

Traffic to the top ten newspaper blogs more than tripled over the last year, reaching 3.8 million in December.

The implication from the data seems to be that the Internet audience is searching for meaning and analysis and a point of view, as opposed to mere breaking news

Overall newspaper Web sites averaged 55.5 million unique visitors a month — one in three of all interest users — an increase of 31% over 2005 according to Nielsen.

Top 4 Newspaper Web Sites in December 2006

Unique Audience (000)

Brand or Channel Dec-05 Dec-06 YOY Growth %

Top 10 Newspapers Roll-Up 27,371 to 29,940 and up 9%

NYTimes.com 10,947 to 13,221 up 21%
USATODAY.com 9,870 to 9,109 down -8%
washingtonpost.com 7,745 to 7,618 down -2%
LA Times 4,090 to 4,925 up 20%

The numbers for Web sites in December:

Audience (000) Person (hh:mm:ss)

1. Microsoft 120,930 2:03:01
2. Google 108,232 1:02:03
3. Yahoo! 111,184 3:02:27
4. Time Warner 107,555 4:14:45
5. eBay 73,763 1:38:32
6. News Corp. Online 70,230 1:37:55
7. InterActiveCorp 59,259 0:25:26
8. Amazon 56,881 0:31:57
9. New York Times Company 44,240 0:18:09
10. Walt Disney Internet Group 44,094 0:31:11

Example: The New York Times had 44.2 million home and work Internet users visit at least one of the NYT sites during the month of December and spent a total of 18 minutes and 9 seconds on one of their sites.

The Guardian newsroom, London (UK).

The Washington Times Newsroom, Washington DC (USA).

The Swaziland Times newsroom.

Sunday newspapers are offering more and more sections, supplements and magazines.

This is nothing new, as this 1930 Danish poster for Politiken shows.

Ryszard Kapuscinski considered the Greek historian Herodotus the world’s first great reporter, and believed on his three-step formula for great reporting:

“First, be willing to submit to hard, painstaking travel to get information first hand.

Then, be able to listen carefully and respectfully to people.

Third, do your homework, be investigative and precise.

Journalists must be missionaries, translators and messengers.”

Dr. Jan Krone reports:

The German edition of the monthly magazine Vanity Fair will be launched on February 8 from Berlin by Condé Nast Verlag.

The new editor in chief, Ulf Poschardt, will start working with 52 journalists in four departments: people, agenda (politics, business and science), culture and style.

Circulation: 120,000 a week.

Number of pages for the inaugural issue: 320

Vanity Fair steps into hard competition with Stern and Bunte, two long- and well-established magazines on the German market.

This is a big challenge for Condé Nast.

Exporting magazines to Germany!

German editors need to know that the markets are open.

Only the best will succeed; and in magazines, like in newspapers, the past in not a guarantee for the future.

Competition is good.