Dr. Jan Krone reports about The AvaStar, the English “virtual” weekly newspaper launched by Axel Springer in Germany.
They are offering now the third issue.
This is an amazing development around the large web-community of Second Life (more than two million registrations).
Reuters, El Pais and other international media are now involved in different ways with the Second Life community.
In the case of The AvaStar, the newspaper is sold for 150 “Lindendollar”, 0,42 EUR, and it will be available inside of Second Life at local distributors and via website.
It will contain around 30 pages of news, fashion, economy and yellow news out of the virtual world.
Get your free pdf copy by clicking here.
This is an incredible phenomenon, but I suspect that in our newsrooms this still is considered a marginal reality.
Well, the same happens with the video-games, doesn’t matter young people in many countries spend today more money in video-games than in going to the movies.
Another example of the lack of sensibility about the real interests of the much needed young readers.
Do just this test in your newsroom.
Ask just these two questions:
Do you know about Second Life?
Do you know about Lost Planet? (one of the most popular video-games in the world)
I guess that in many of our newsrooms less than 10% of the journalists will know what we are talking about.
Again, the problem is not young readers.
We are, not them.
