WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Chirac and Sarkozy.

A great picture.

Jean-Marie Colombani, publisher of Le Monde writes about the independence of the paper, and one smart reader shoots to him:

Monsieur Colombani, votre atricle intitulé “Indépendance” est baclé.

Il faut distinguer clairement le concept de journal “d’opinion” et celui de journal indépendant.

Le Monde est un journal d’opinion, il affirme assez clairement sa position sur un certain nombre de sujets.

Le Monde n’est pas un journal indépendant pour trois raisons: la structure de son capital, la part des revenus publicitaires, la composition de son conseil d’administration (ou figurent des lobbyistes notoires).

Oh boy, these French readers are not stupid.

My take: when I see a newspaper that needs to say that it is “independent” I know that it is not.

Show, don’t tell!

I like these STORY HIGHLIGHTS that now lead any story on CNN.com.

The breaking news about the French elections is presented in this way:

• NEW: Conservative Sarkozy and Socialist Royal headed to a runoff, polls project

• French citizens voted en masse to choose a new president

• Turnout high, with voter registration numbers up nationwide

• Sunday is first round; top contenders go head to head on May 6

William Powers writes in the National Journal about the hard times for the weekly news magazine:

As I write this column, two magazines, Newsweek and Time, sit at my elbow. Each is the current issue, dated April 23.

Each devotes its cover and many inside pages to a story that, as it went to press, was seemingly the only thing that mattered in America, the fall of Don Imus.

Each intelligently pores over that story, discovering Several Larger Truths about our culture…

And each feels pointless, expired, like an ancient scroll found in a cave.

Try transporting yourself back to the time of Imus.

Hard, isn’t it?

It was just five or six days ago, but it might as well be five months.

This Newsweek issue was hitting the stands the morning that the Blacksburg massacre happened.

If you went to the magazine’s Web site that day, you would have seen the Imus cover reduced to a postage stamp in an upper corner of the main page…

Nothing stinks like old news…

Don’t get me wrong.

We really do care about these stories for a few days, sometimes a week…

Three weeks ago, Don Imus didn’t figure at all in most people’s lives.

According to Newsweek, his radio show had 2.25 million-plus “unique” weekly listeners, which is less than the population of Minneapolis-St. Paul.

He mattered more than that, briefly, because his transgression tapped into a few larger issues that society happened to be working on.

The story itself is just an instrument, a disposable tool.

Use it quickly and move on.

The exception to this rule is the rare story that is so large on its own terms, it obliterates all other story lines — 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina being the most prominent recent examples.

Maybe the Virginia Tech massacre, an authentic national horror, is one of those stories.

Or maybe, even as you read this, the next big thing has already come along.

Like newspapers, news magazines can not survive just digesting last week’s news.

Explain and advance.

Anticipatory journalism is the new name of the game.

Tell my WHY and tell me WHAT’S NEXT.

More good covers.

Dow Jones aims to have less than half its revenue come from traditional print operations by 2009, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

CEO Rich Zannino, speaking at the company’s annual meeting, said he hoped to further cut the company’s reliance on print publications in the coming years.

Already, revenue is growing far more quickly from digital than print publications at Dow Jones.

The Wall Street Journal’s U.S. print edition saw its advertising revenue drop 1.8 percent in the first quarter, for instance, while advertising revenue for Dow Jones Online rose 30 percent.

My feling is that 2009 is too late.

With a comic, the same day that in Barcelona a Comic Expo was inaugurated.

Brilliant.

“Despite a difficult print advertising environment, we continued to make progress on our strategy of introducing new products, developing our content verticals, building our innovation capability, aggressively managing costs and rebalancing our portfolio of businesses,” said Janet L.Robinson, the New York Times Company president and CEO.

So… down again.

Again.

And again.

Here is my point:

The New York Times is better than ever online and offline.

The editorial quality of these two products is outstanding.

If they can not make money, I am sorry, but who can make it?

The New York Times has the best editors in the country.

The best reporters.

The best columnists.

The best designers.

The best photographers.

The best graphic artists.

And it is the best media branding in the world.

If this is right, let me ask a very serious question.

Are Janet Robinson and her business team the real problem for The New York Times?

Are all these managers doing the job needed to save this paper?

Are all these professionals delivering the results that this paper deserves?

No.

It’s very clear to me.

Many times, in many countries, in many markets, I hear the same comments and excuses from editors of papers in decline: “You know, Juan Antonio, the problem is these business managers that don’t know how to sell the paper.”

Normally it’s the opposite: The editorial product is not selling well because the newsroom is doing a poor job and readers and advertisers know it.

Here it’s different.

Readers and advertisers of The New York Times will agree that the print and online editions are excellent.

So…

I understand the criticism from investors.

Not toward the Sulzberger family.

They’re not the problem — at least they can’t damage the paper too much.

The real damage and danger comes from the business team.

Perhaps they are incompetent, lazy, arrogant and the real problem in this company.

The Sulzberger family is only culpable for not firing them.

They are the ones to blame; not for their personal performance — if the United States can work with Bush in the White House, I don’t see why The New York Times can’t work with the Sulzberger family.

They’re the ones to blame because they’re the ones who keep these people.

Fire them and save The New York Times!

MARCA goes wild with Leo Messi, “the new Maradona.”

20 years after another famous Maradona moment, the Barcelona superstar scores one of the most fantastic gols in soccer history.

Watch here, on the AS website, a video clip that mixes the two Argentinian football players at heir best.

Bold, brilliant sports coverage from Gazeta Wyborcza, the leading Polish newspaper.

Grzegorz Piechota writes me:

“The whole newspaper world switches to more compact formats, but
sometimes the news breaks so big that we miss we don’t publish a broadsheet.

Today UEFA announced that Poland and Ukraine will together host
European Football Championships EURO 2012. It is absolutely sensational news -
we have never organised such an event. And we won over Italy (can you
imagine?) and Hungary with Croatia.”

Here you have the two pages of today’s Gazeta Wyborcza – the front one and
the last one, linked together to cover the news of the day, probably the news of the year.

“There are two mastheads and two logos: one in Polish language, the
other in Ukrainian.

There are two cover headlines: *Poland – Ukraine We Won!* and *Ukraine
- Poland Together Today*.

We report the news – *Miracle in Cardiff* (where the decision was taken
by UEFA), *Gilowska found a billion* (about another miracle – money
found in state budget to start preparations), about political situation in
Ukraine.

Of course those stories can’t be devoted only to today’s (or rather
yesterday’s) news. They focus on future events: expected boom in economy,
business, investments. We go deeper inside the paper.

We publish also a front page commentary – that football can open doors
for Ukraine to the European Union and we – as Poland – have to do a lot
to help our neighbours go through this door.

Inside: 12 pages just about this topic.

- Visuals of projected stadiums (and empty spaces today in those
places).
- Maps of highways to be built.
- Review of businesses to be done and prosper in next several years.
- Calls for action: to drop visa restrictions for Ukrainian people to
Poland, how to make border-crossing easier, why not invite Ukraine to
the EU and end all those problems?
- Inside stories about negotiations between Poland and Ukraine, talks
with UEFA.
- People behind the news: the controversial Ukrainian oligarch who was
the most important person in those negotiations.
- Exclusive polls we assigned.”

Poland and Ukraine are the winners.

But Gazeta Wyborcza too.

This is a terrific news package of what INNOVATION calls anticipatory journalism.

Well done!