WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Brilliant!

The new Monocle Mediterraneo is a shame to lazy daily newspaper publishers and editors.

Done and sold by a magazine!

What about our Mediterranean tired newspaper brands unable to profit from millions of avid beach readers?

What about our sleepy Spanish, French and Italian newspapers?

What about the Nice Matin  and other horrific Mediterranean newspapers of this world?

Newspapers are not dead.

But many are really dead or deserve to die… because their brains are dead.

Death = lack of ideas.

Brazil has been a broadsheet newspaper country.

Zero Hora in Porto Alegre has been the exception with one of the most successful regional papers of Brazil.

Now INNOVATION’s Diario de S. Paulo is showing the amazing possibilities of a fantastic berliner.

A new kind of reader’s experience.

Expected more newspapers like this in Brazil, USA, Canada, Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru…

The USA multi-section broadsheet newspaper is dead.

This is a newspaper easy to read.

Full of new ways to present the news.

A city newspaper.

Covering the new urban tribes.

Interactive.

Speaking and listening to the readers.

A life-style newspaper.

Useful.

With the best pictures.

Visual journalism at its best.

Full of energy.

With sports in the back cover.

In a mega-city like Sao Paulo, this is a refreshing new formula to present the news and tell stories in a compact and compelling way.

Quality over quantity.

An  edited newspaper.

A quality-popular “daily-news-magazine”

Welcome to the “diario bonito”.

The “newspaper bonito”.

The new Diario de S.Paulo has a great visual journalism team and they deserve our gratitude for their first class job producing clean, elegant, fresh and complling pages and infographics.

All this has beem possible than to the Art Director, Renata Maneschy, and her colleagues: Isac, Robson, Eduardo, Thalita, Manoel, Evandro, Manoel, Caio, Ana Paula, Elio, Jean and Pedro.

Well done!

In the last few months, the leading newspapers of Brazil have been making changes under a common goal: produce the newspaper of the future.

Well, our friend Washington Olivetto, believes like us in the opposite.

We don’t know how the newspaper of the future will be, so perhaps is better to produce the newspaper of today…

The new Diario de S.Paulo doesn’t have anything really new: just news and stories worth to read.

The challenge on Sundays or in weekdays is not to fill hundreds of pages with content that readers don’t read, but just to edit, edit, edit… and deliver a compact and compelling newspaper full of original news and stories worth to read.

Readers don’t buy anymore quantity, volume of weight, but quality and selection.

In one section (80 pages this Sunday because there is a lot of advertising, and 64 the rest of the week).

Again INNOVATION’s Antonio Martin has produced a “content-driven” design.

Simple, clear, elegant, fresh and, above all, easy to read.

Not just to look but to read.

This is a newspaper not to win design awards but readers, happy and loyal readers.

And readers and time spent reading news ans ads is what advertiser want.

The new owners of the paper have invested in the basics: more and better journalism, an integrated open-space newsroom and the editors have only one challenge: publish everyday a necessary newspaper.

A post-news paper.

Something that it’s easy to say and more difficult to implement.

That said, let me tell you how happy we are with today’s inaugural cover story.

Brazil has presidential elections in a few weeks.

José Serra (PSDB) and Dilma Rousseff (PT) are the main candidates.

Diario de S.Paulo had access to the latest pre-election polls, and this classic coverage is today in all the Brazilian newspapers.

But the editors of the new Diario de S.Paulo decided to put the story inside and be different.

How?

They found another couple, Dilma, and Jose, so their 34 year marriage is the love-story that tells the readers that this is a newspaper for a new kind of great stories.

Welcome to the past, the present and the future: news and stories worth to read.

Welcome to the new Diario de S. Paulo!

New format.

New content.

New editorial architecture.

New newsroom.

New design.

New logo.

New owner (Traffic Group).

New publisher (Jose Havilla).

New CEO (Flavio Pestana).

New editor (Leao Serva).

Full color.

A new INNOVATION newspaper for the largest and most creative Latin American mega-city.

Thanks to INNOVATION’s Eduardo Tessler, Antonio Martin, Carlo Campos, and Pablo Ramirez.

An to Washington Olivetto, the Advertising Cannes Lion King, for a crazy launching campaign here and here..

More, tomorrow.

(Thanks to Nascapas blog)

WAN/IFRA announced today:

Innovations in Newspapers Report to Be Presented at World Editors Forum

Newsroom integration. Multimedia storytelling techniques. Investigative journalism. Social media. Tablets. Readers’ clubs. Business reorganisation. These are some of the topics covered in “Innovations in Newspapers 2010 World Report”, to be presented at the World Editors Forum, to be held in Hamburg, Germany, from 6 to 8 October next.

The annual report by the Innovation International Media Consulting Group for the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), tracks some of the most promising trends for newspaper companies as they evolve into multimedia businesses.

“What we need to do is think in terms of a multitude of products, summarized under a brand, in a brand world, or even better – in a brand experience world,” says Horst Pirker, Group Chief Executive Officer of Styria Media Group in Austria and First Vice President of WAN-IFRA, in the introduction to the report.

The Innovations in Newspapers presentation at the World Editors Forum will be one of the highlights of the event, dedicated to “The Tablet Year” with a focus on how mobile distribution is changing the news business. Participants will receive a free copy of the report. Full details of the Editors Forum conference can be found here.

Contents of the 2010 Innovations report, written by Innovation consultants and leading industry experts includes:

- New Narratives, which discusses new digital storytelling opportunities;

- Business Integration, which outlines Innovation’s recommendations for modernizing marketing and sales structures to meet digital needs;

- Newsrooms, which examines how to transform a linear, paper-centric newsroom into a fully integrated digital “news engine”;

- Newsroom Integration, a case study of El Tiempo’s across-the-board newsroom integration;

- Innovation, which takes a look at “i”, a new Portuguese daily that went from launch to European Newspaper of the Year in six months;

- Passion builds audiences, which examines a bright spot in the newspaper landscape: sports papers;

- Investigative journalism, which shows even small newsroom can produce quality investigations;

- Social media,  which provides an in-depth look at the growing relevance of social media for news organisations;

- Information technology, which provides 10 recommendations for newspapers’ IT departments;

- Tablets, which looks at 12 concepts for designing for the iPad;

- Readers’ Clubs, which discusses new revenue streams provided by newspapers’ brand extensions through Readers’ Clubs;

- And family businesses, which outlines the challenges facing family-owned information companies.

You can buy right now the new report in English here.

The New York Times David Carr makes the point about how Consumer Reports i in the “credibility business”

“It was a big week for Consumer Reports and a reminder that media that is unsupported by advertising can often have an impact that more traditional publishing, or even the most tech-savvy, enterprises don’t. With 3.9 million subscribers to its magazine and 3.3 million paid subscribers to its Web site, Consumer Reports has a combined paid circulation of 7.2 million, up 33 percent since 2004.”

—

“If you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. That’s a maxim of modern public relations, one that’s on display every day in Washington, on cable TV and, last Friday, on stage in Cupertino. But, with its long history and reputation for efficacy, Consumer Reports is the opposite of a juicy target.”

As Rob Curley said today in Twitter: Bless Consumer Reports!

Steve Jobs was seen “arrogant”, “defensive” and “upset” and the Antennagate is not over.

Some reactions:

Larry Magid (Huffington Post) wrote that while he was “pretty pleased” with Apple’s response to a relatively minor issue, he thought Jobs sounded unnecessarily defensive. “Truth be told, iPhone users can get a signal just as well as with any other phone as long they don’t put their finger on the little crack in the lower left side of the wraparound metal antenna.”

Jason Schwarz (Seeking Alpha): “Traditional media outlets got duped. The wild west of the blogosphere had a few isolated reports of iPhone 4 antenna issues and then Consumer Reports released a suspect report that was contrary to majority experience and big media everywhere jumped on board. False perception overtook reality. Kudos to Steve Jobs for putting the small minority in its place. Big media outlets should have done a better job of filtering this news for their customers. Actual statistics show 0.55% of iPhone 4 users have called AppleCare to complain about antenna issues and only 1.7% of buyers have returned the phone. The media created a crisis that did not exist as I explained in this week’s CNBC interview.”

Ben Parr (Masahable/Apple): “Apple didn’t come out of this unscathed, though. They had to take a beating from the media first. It doesn’t matter whether “antennagate” was overblown or not anymore: The damage has been done.

1. There will be financial damage (but not much). The free cases, free bumpers and iPhone returns will cost the company some revenue. However, we predict that the damage will be minimal in the face of overall profits. Expect record quarters — just not as high as they could have potentially been.

2. Apple is no longer perfect. That’s not to say that they ever were, but most people blamed AT&T for many of the iPhone’s problems rather than blaming the Apple team. Now, the door is open to criticism of Apple and its future products after Jobs’ admission of imperfection.

3. Future products will undergo more scrutiny. The media is just going to be more critical of Apple, at least for a while.

Consumers will likely remember “antennagate” when they purchase their next iPhone or iPad, and this episode might make them more cautious when they consider buying their next Apple product.”

Apple’s stock seesawed throughout the day and ended down $1.55, or -0.6%.

UPDATE:

More reactions here including Consumer Reports saying:

“We look forward to a long-term fix from Apple.

As things currently stand, the iPhone 4 is still not one of our Recommended models.”

Oh, oh…

Philip Elmer-DeWitt asks in his blog the first question.

Yes es my answer, but a magic performance of Steve Jobs (better than ever, a study case on how to conduct a press conference after three weeks of terrible crisis miss-management) will not end the real problem.

The free cases either.

What the Apple fans want is a perfect iPhone.

A better one.

This what they were told, this is what they are asking for.

So, again, this is another example of how risky is to fuel high expectations… and paying the consequences of under delivering.

In summary:

A humble Steve Jobs.

Really upset by the “media over reaction”

That ended confronting and challenging two big news organizations: Bloomberg (BusinessWeek) and The New York Times.

They will respond.

And Apple will have, bad for them, better for us, a more rough watchdog coverage.

When you become too big, to powerful, you could end as an arrogant organization.

A lesson for Apple.

Good news for all of us.

UPDATE:

Peter, a reader of The New York Times writes the most recommended comment, a perfect summary of this story:

Jobs adds: “This has been blown so out of proportion that it is incredible.” Not because of the antenna issue, but because of how he and Apple handled the problem from the start. If they had just come clean at the beginning, offered the free cases, didn’t blame the users for holding it wrong, didn’t try to argue that it was a software issue, and so on, perhaps the press coverage would have been a bit more flattering. But Apple, and Jobs in particular, suffer from an extreme overabundance of hubris, and we love to watch the mighty and arrogant take a fall – the press has just been playing to our insatiable appetite for Schadenfreude. Hopefully this has shown Apple that the press won’t always be their faithful cheerleaders.

Brilliant!