Today, I had a great time with Mark Byford, Deputy Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation and head of BBC Journalism, and his Senior Editors Team.

They wanted me to present the INNOVATION experiences and models on Newsroom Integrations.

They understand that this is a crucial issue for their future.

The BBC doesn’t buy the “us” against “them” idea and they have decided to reorganize the newsroom facilities around “content and audiences”, our mantra in this field.

So they were really interested in how to create new working flows, how to build an agnostic platform super-desk, etc.

After the presentation and many questions from this group, I have the feeling that the BBC can lead better than anybody else the new online journalism narratives of the 21st Century.

They have the talent, credibility, reputation, people and leadership to re-invent journalism in these new new platforms.

The old Regent Street Bush House or the BBC Broadcasting House will become, for sure, the biggest and most advanced state-of-the-art multimedia newsroom of the world.

The huge new rebuilding project will cost over 200 million pounds.

In less than 2-year time, more than 5.000 BBC people will move there and work together under one roof.

BH has been the BBC’S headquarters since 1932 and has survived every attempt of Hitler to destroy it.

The architects will have produced an estimated 10,000 drawings by the end of the project that will include 80.000-square meter of production areas, studios and staff facilities, plus a 4.000-square meter newsroom.

64,000 tonnes of debris will be removed from the site.

Around 17,000 lorry loads of rubbish will be taken from BH

During excavation, work will be taking place 4 meters from the Victoria tube line.

There will be six new studios for television news.

The new News studio will be one of the largest live newsrooms in the world

There will be 140 acoustic spaces for Radio & Music, News and World Service.

There will be 10,000 miles of cabling in the new building.

The focus of the complex is an atria-lit newsroom at the base of the main building.

The nine floors above the new double-height space are supported by a post-tensioned concrete transfer structure springing from four massive columns.

The resulting column-free space also facilitates the construction of television studios (including one double-height studio) in the three levels below the newsroom.

The famous London’s old Art Deco building will be the response to the huge challenges on how to make the BBC relevant in the new digital media landscape.

See here some old pictures of the BBC newsrooms.

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After the old and new fronts, here are some of the new inside pages — starting with page 2, explaining the changes.

Again, Alfredo Trivino has improved the paper with energetic color, type, photos and graphics.

The combination works.

I am sure that readers will spend more time, reading, reading, reading.

There is no better measure for the success of a redesign than more readers and more reading time.

The rest is cosmetics and decoration.

And The Sunday Times delivers good journalism with excellent visual journalism.

Now better than in the past.

The covers of the first three international (English, Spanish and Italian) editions of our 2008 Innovations in Newspapers™ Global Report are ready for the printer.

Deborah Withey, Deputy Managing Editor for Visuals and Joint Ventures at The Virginian-Pilot, did the illustration.

The art direction for the report was done by Ian Cockburn and Guillermo Nagore (pictured with Claude Erbsen, one of the three editors)

I asked INNOVATION’s Juan Cano about the best covers at the ASME contest and this was his choice:

I am really impressed by the “I am” cover of New York magazine.

Magazines are the best medium to decipher social changes.

This cover interprets how we feel now.

About important issues.

Both from inside and outside ourselves.

With brilliant graphics.

Magazine creativity at its best!

Juan Cano, a journalist for more than 40 years, worked for magazines during the last 30 years as editor in chief, founder or publisher of more than 20 titles.

He was editorial director for Grunner und Jahr, Bauer and Hachette Filipacchi, and President of ETMA (European Television Magazines Association)

A member of the Editorial Comittee of Hachette Filipacchi in Paris and special adviser on magazines to the President of Lagardre Active Média.

A world record!

Javier likes these cover winners from The New Yorker:

Both, he says, are delicate, alegorical and powerful, and at the same time, simple and very smart.

And he also likes the Time magazine cover with the Republican elephant rear.

Monocle’s November issue has a cover story (subscription only) about the future of print media.

Tyler Brule’s magazine selected only a few newspapers.

One of them is Expresso from Portugal, which was also included as a trendy paper in the inaugural issue of the magazine.

In their own words:

“Less text, more information” was the principle behind the 2006 redesign of the Portuguese weekly.

“We wanted to cut the fat out, make it leaner,” explains the editor, Henrique Monteiro.

“We had the professional audience but we wanted to attract younger people.”

Pairing up with Javier Errea from media consultants Innovation, Monteiro made the switch from broadsheet to colour Berliner format.

Mário Feliciano, a Portuguese typographer, delivered fonts inspired by 18th-century Iberian text.

Bullet points, fact boxes and small Q&As now sit next to more white space to help readers digest the big stories.

As a result, 25-34-year-olds have replaced 45-54-year-olds as the core demographic.

Female readers are up from 42 to 48 per cent, while circulation has risen 9 per cent in the past year to 130,000.

(Thanks to Gabriel Sama)

With exclusive cover stories like today’s:

I get Expresso every week by mail.

It’s a real pleasure.

To read it.

To see it.

To enjoy it.

The leading paper of Portugal looks fresh, provocative, smart and EASY to read.

In the September 15th edition, they have a full page with a summary of the last 12 months after the relaunch of the new editorial formula for print and online, the new format and the new design.

The results of our work with Expresso have been better than expected by some competitors and early critics of what was considered a dramatic change.

Well, it was dramatic.

But Expresso is now better than ever:

52 weeks after the INNOVATION work, Expresso sells 9.1% more paid copies than the year before.

Advertising is up 3.9%.

And Expresso now has more young readers than any other Portuguese newspaper.

The 5 secrets of this INNOVATION project:

1. A two-year plan that started with a new editor and new art director.

2. A unique, dramatic, content-driven redesign that won many international design awards.

3. Better content than ever in new quick, easy-to-read formats.

4. Training, training, training.

5. A great marketing campaign.

Luiz Carvalho posted a video report of the night of the change on YouTube, that shows the founder of Expresso, Francisco Pinto Balsemao, pressing the button that sent the last page to the printer.

What a night, what a year!

These are some amazing pages.

(Thanks to Marco Grieco, Art Director)

Good news and ideas from the World Association of Newspapers (WAN):

What will the newspaper look like in 2020?

The World Association of Newspapers asked 22 futurists, academics, industry insiders, internet pioneers and other media experts to envision the newspaper of the future, and their responses say much about the present state of the newspaper business.

Some say newspapers will resemble glossy magazines.

Some say they will be individually tailored to readers.

Some envision networks of news generators and digital news hubs.

All these future scenarios share one thing in common — they’re all based on current trends in the industry as newspapers evolve and grow as multimedia businesses.

“Envisioning the Newspaper 2020″ will soon be published by the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, exclusively for members of WAN.

But the report served as a centrepiece Thursday in a seminar on the future of newspapers at the World Digital Publishing conference, which drew 400 media executives from 74 countries to Amsterdam.

Here are some excerpts from “Envisioning the Newspaper 2020,” the first of seven SFN Strategy Reports for WAN members to be published in 2007 and 2008:

“Regardless of the name of the service, the core competency of news and newspaper publishers of the future will consist of generating content from highly efficient networks, technically process and manage them via networks and continuously or at regular intervals disseminate these contents through a multitude of channels. The recipients of the content will increasingly want to decide for themselves which channel they want to use at which time – letters and images on conventional or electronic paper, the Internet, mobile phones or a combination of various information carriers.” Gerd Finkbeiner, Chairman, Man Roland, Germany

“As digital media takes an increasing hold on the news industry, audiences, in turn, will demand news reporting in which they can place the trust and confidence once reserved primarily for newspapers. Collaborative filtering tools and trust metrics will help to achieve those ends.” Craig Newmark, founder of Craiglist.org, USA

“A newspaper’s brand is its foundation and its greatest value. The newspaper is an institution with the greatest credibility on earth. A newspaper’s brand represents a reader’s trust, based on the supposed expertise of collaborators to understand the world, identify what is relevant, deeply investigate and report with faithfulness and impartiality, clearly distinguishing fact from opinion and publicity. This is what makes a newspaper different from other players in the market, even those equally capable of managing and distributing information.” Flavio Ferrari, CEO, IBOPE Media Information, Brazil

“Oh, printed products may well continue and in some countries still grow. But I wouldn’t mourn their deaths so long as we find ways for their journalism to live on and prosper. A newspaper mustn’t define itself by its medium. It isn’t just paper. Its strength and value do not come from controlling content or distribution. And protecting those dwindling advantages is not a viable strategy for growth – or survival.” Jeff Jarvis, media consultant, blogger and head of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York, USA

“Indeed, the more that life becomes globalised, digital and virtual, the more, I would argue, people will seek out products like newspapers that slow things down a little and tell us what’s important and what’s not, especially at a local level. And let’s also not forget that physical newspapers, like books, are superb examples of industrial design, which, if invented today, would be greeted as a miracle innovation. They don’t need power, there’s no screen glare, they don’t crash and when you’re finished with them they can be safety recycled.” Richard Watson, futurist, Future Exploration Network, Australia

“By 2020 smart newspaper networks allow readers to receive best-of-breed material in all specialties. The un-bundling of the newspaper that began in the early 21st century has resulted in the un-bundling of the newsroom itself. Now readers sip from rich networks of content providers who excel in individual areas.”
Robert Cauthorn, CEO, CityTools, USA

“Newspaper companies will look very different in 2020. There are many reasons to be confident that our industry has the vision, the energy and the fundamental business strengths to emerge by 2020 as a multi-media communications business with a wider market to operate in than it had before 2007.” Chris Bisco, Managing Director, Publishing Division, CN Group, United Kingdom

“The future, it appears, will be one in which more information of more kinds becomes more easily available to more people. With or without printed newspapers themselves – the first near-universal information medium – it appears the purpose and the legacy of the newspaper will continue to be fulfilled.” Stephen Gray, Managing Director, Newspaper Next Project, American Press Institute, USA

“It is all about people who see opportunities where others see threats, who are creative when others are not and who are eager to get training in subjects they need for the future. They all have to be passionate about the future of media. They should, because there have never been so many opportunities in the media market.” Tomas Brunegård, CEO, Stampen Group, Sweden

“Newspapers are going to survive. Will we be doing things the way we’ve always done them? Absolutely not. In the United States, there are two types of newspaper publishers – those who think the most important part of the word newspaper is ’news’ and those who think the most important part of that word is ’paper.’ …We can’t be afraid of reaching our audience in new ways. It will be one of the keys to our industry’s successful future.” Rob Curly, Vice President for Product Development, Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive, USA

“Forget the Internet. It’s not the enemy. (Indeed the Internet will ultimately save the newspaper). Readers don’t read newspapers not just because they get their news online, but because they find them boring. There are major societal changes involved. Journalists are still working in a tradition that began with the young democracy.” Roger Black, Design Consultant, USA

“In order to grow profits in a mature economy, the key is to be able to handle the rapidly changing consumer needs by making new products and leveraging development capabilities… Thinking of the shape of the newspaper in 2020, it is not about new media formats, but rather it is about newspapers having to determine what is the added value that is provided.” Takashi Ishioka, Strategic Consultant, Dream Incubator, Japan

“The printed newspaper will get smaller and become mostly free. New technology and combination probably with mobile phones will make even the printed newspaper much more interactive than today. Low voltage e-paper or other paper-replacing foldable screens will be available to offer an alternative to the paper version, but very little interactive or cost efficient in regards to information retrieval.” Moritz Wuttke, CEO, APAC Publicitas, China

“Innovation believes in the future of newspapers, but the newspapers of the future will be very different, better and more profitable than ever if they embrace change and innovation without losing the core and soul of our business: journalism.” Juan Antonio Giner, Founding Partner, Innovation International Media Consulting Group, USA.

(If you are interested in my full vision please write me at giner@innovation-mediaconsulting.com and I will be more than happy to send you a copy of my contribution)

“The most successful newspapers of the last decade launched Internet businesses that behaved as strategic options for the core newspaper franchises. Similarly, the most successful papers of the next decade are likely to be those that continue to launch new ventures not as replacements for the paper, or as catalysts for its imminent transformation, but instead as options on future shifts in strategy in response to changes that today can only be dimly imagined.” Michael Raynor, Distinguished Research Fellow, Deloitte Consulting

“It takes tremendous time, effort and work to convince traditional print editors that they are now part of a 24/7 news gathering and storytelling process, and that the printed product is only one of the various platforms through which news and information are dispensed. Management plays a key role.” Mario Garcia, Founder and CEO, Garcia Media

“The real disruptors of the next decade won’t be companies, but people – creative, entrepreneurial opportunists who are transforming the global economy – developers, designers, marketers, sales people, business analysts, project managers, accountants, lawyers and other professionals scattered around the globe, connecting and working from anywhere to build businesses and solve problems everywhere.” Andrew Nachison, co-founder and CEO, iFOCOS, USA

“Technical innovations will change the future of newspapers. Computers and mobile handsets double their capacity every nine months. This allows media companies to continuously introduce new and improved services. New technical innovations and improvements also drive change in human behaviour. Today, teens must be connected to their friends at all times. Their technical devices become part of their personal identity. As a result, teens carry a potential distribution channel for news and entertainment with them at all times.” Stig Eide Sivertsen, CEO Broadcasting Division, Telenor, Norway

“If newspaper companies are to survive and prosper in this new environment, managers of firms will need to engage in strategic planning and implementation that builds upon existing capabilities and uses existing skills, knowledge and capacity to improve existing papers and introduce new products that provide access to parts of the public not well served today.” Robert Picard, Director, Media Management and Transformation Centre, Jonköping University, Sweden

Tomorrow, the leading newspaper of Funchal (Madeira), Diario de Noticias, launches its new editorial and graphic formula.

The Blandy family, which also produces some of Madeira’s best wines, and ControlInveste Media run this newspaper with style, passion and strong community-oriented news policies.

During the last nine months, a team of INNOVATION consultants (Carlos Soria, Guillermo Nagore, Eduardo Tessler, Ricardo Chaves, Decio Trujilo and Marta Botero) have been working on these changes under the leadership of Diario de Noticias president Michael Blandy and general manager Jose Bettencourt da Camara.

Dramatic and innovative changes for a regional newspaper.

Diario de Noticias is a striking case that shows how a quality, independent, regional newspaper can have one of the highest penetration rates of the Portuguese press.

Today I will show you today some of our prototypes, and tomorrow you will see the first real pages.

Guillermo Nagore, our New York-based design consultant, has been the force behind many of these new graphic concepts.

And today, the judges of the ÑHO4, the annual competition for the best newspaper design in Spain and Portugal, announced that El Economista and Expresso have won many new awards.

El Economista is the best-designed Spanish newspaper of the year for the 20,000-50,000 copies category, and Expresso is the best redesign of the year in Spain and Portugal.

El Economista is a new national financial newspaper published in Madrid by Alfonso de Salas, the founding CEO of El Mundo.

Expresso is the leading quality national weekend newspaper of Portugal, founded by Francisco Pinto Balsemao.

(Before)

(After)

These two newspapers from Madrid and Lisbon are INNOVATION clients, and Javier Errea, our chief design consultant, was the leading force behind the graphic projects.

Javier Errea, after the highly successful redesign of Eleftheros Typos in Athens (Greece) and Capital in Sofia (Bulgaria), is now working on several new projects: Diario de Navarra in Pamplona (Spain), Al Bayan in Dubai (UAE), and El Heraldo in Barranquilla (Colombia).

Javier is a journalist who has been a reporter, editor, designer and now another worlwide-award-winning INNOVATION consultant.

INNOVATION has been working for more than a year with the local team of directors and editors of this newspaper and next week, Diario de Noticias will present its new editorial and graphic design.

Guillermo Nagore (New York) is the INNOVATION consultant behind the graphic change.

Carlos Soria (Spain), Eduardo Tessler (Brazil) and Marta Botero (Colombia) developed the new editorial and newsroom managent models.

You will see here in a few days the new and improved Diario de Noticias, a family-owned newspaper celebrating 130 years.

Tomorrow, La Vanguardia, the leading quality family-owned newspaper of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain), will launch its new format.

Today, La Vanguardia has a supplement that tracks the graphic changes of the paper in its 126 years.

La Vanguardia will use two new and fast Wifag Evolution 371 full color printing presses.

The promotional campaign is simple and direct:

“La Vanguardia no cambia” or “La Vanguardia doesn’t change”

The message is clear:

The Spanish newspaper introduces editorial and graphic changes but the “soul” of the paper remains.

This is not a newspaper in crisis.

Or trying to find a new niche.

La Vanguardia will have the same tabloid format of El Pais, and the same format that it has had for its national and international editions for many years.

Javier de Godo, publisher and president of the paper was the force behind the dramatic and very successful changes made on October 2, 1989.

Then, Walter Bernard and Milton Glaser redesigned La Vanguardia in a big and original way and the paper started to print the new format with another Wifag.

The nameplate was changed.

A new editorial formula was launched and La Vanguardia got new young readers and more ads than ever.

Tomorrow’s changes are less dramatic, but, like in 1989, they have been seriously discussed for more than two years.

The new graphic and editorial formula has been developed as an “in-house” project lead by the publisher, Javier de Godo, and the editors Jose Antich and Alfredo Abian.

During this process, INNOVATION acted as a facilitator for the internal discussion.

The INNOVATION team included Carlos Soria (Spain), Juan Antonio Giner (USA), Juan Senor (UK), Claude Erbsen (USA), Thomaz Souto Correa (Brazil), Javier Errea (Spain), Javier Zarracina (USA), and Marta Torres (Spain).

We selected and presented the most relevant international media trends, audited the newspaper, reviewed its newsroom management and suggested many changes that at the end of this process were included in a final report to the directors and editors of La Vanguardia.

After our report was issued, the graphic changes were produced by the design department of La Vanguardia, lead by Carlos Perez de Rozas, Rosa Mundet and Jose Alberola, and the help of Pablo Martin and Jaime Serra.

They have done a superb job.

It has been a longterm project.

And an example of team work.

A content-driven redesign.

Today, the editor of the paper, Jose Antich, explains in its daily bulletin (“Looking to the Future”) how La Vanguardia will change tomorrow, but keeping its soul and, what’s more important, offering a better product than ever.

Jesus de Polanco died Saturday at the age of 77.

Polanco, the billionaire chairman of the Spanish media conglomerate Grupo PRISA, co-founded El Pais and founded Grupo PRISA, which also owns radio and TV stations and publishing companies.

Grupo PRISA is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world.

El Pais, launched in 1976, following Franco’s 1975 death, became Spain’s most-read newspaper as the country returned to democracy.

It remains its top-selling daily.

He was the most powerful newspaper publisher in Spain.

I met him twice in my life:

The first time in Barcelona during an international seminar organized by INNOVATION.

It was in the early 90′s, and he was reluctant to accept that newspapers needed to be full-color products.

The second time in Madrid in his office at the Santillana Foundation near the Ritz hotel.

I went to see him with my friend Jayme Sirotsky, the first Latin American president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN)

We had a very long conversation.

During these two hours, alone with Mr. Polanco, I found that:

1. He loved books. He was literally surrounded by bookshelfs.

2. He loved Latin America. He knew very well who was who in Latin America.

INNOVATION was the first company hired by PRISA to do editorial consulting for the Group.

Jeff Jarvis has been in Germany consulting for Burda and he is very impressed by the quality of their young interns:

I’ve been told that the secret to MTV’s success is that it is reallly run by its interns.

Having interns and giving them the respect to both train them and listen to them is vital today for the obvious reason:

They understand the future better than the rest of us.

More than that, they are the future.

Reading Tina Brown’s latest book (The Diana Chronicles) during the last few days, she is described with this first line:

Tina Brown was twenty-five when she became editor-in-chief of The Tatler, reviving the nearly defunct 270 year sold magazine.

Well… our president, Carlos Soria, became the youngest media CEO in Spain when he was less than 26 year old, and since then he always tells us:

“Let’s always give great challenges and opportunities to young people, as soon as possible.”

INNOVATION has today a new generation of young consultants like Guillermo Nagore in New York, Carlo Campos, Jose Antonio Ferris, Ismael Nafria, Pablo Ramirez, Pablo Errea, Jorge Heili, and Daniel Lozano in Madrid, Gabriel Sama in San Antonio, Sophie Bougneres in France, Chiqui Esteban in Cadiz, Denny Brack in Washington D.C., Eduardo Tessler in Brazil, Christian Oliver in Atlanta, Javier Errea in Pamplona, David LaFontaine and Janine Warner in Los Angeles, Felipe Lamus in Chapel Hill, or Al Trivino, Michael Agar, Robin Gould, Guy Smith, Rob Beynon, and Juan Senor in London who are good examples of this policy of hiring the best of the best.

They are the future of INNOVATION.

Rodrigo is also one of our best friends.

He and his family, owners of O Estado de S. Paulo in Brazil, were the first clients of INNOVATION.

Born in São Paulo, he is a journalist who studied in the École des Hautes Études (Paris, France), and was the director of Agência Estado (AE).

A former president of the Fundação SOS Mata Atlântica, he now is the driving force behind RadiumSystems-Peabirus, and the Brazilian representative of Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project.

Watch this exclusive video produced by the INNOVATION International Media Consulting Group in London and presented by Juan Senor, INNOVATION’s UK Director, at the World Newspaper Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.

Percent of global Internet users who visited this site. Average in the last 3 months.

Change: up 14%

Traffic Rank for Innovationsinnewspapers.com: Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach). Average in last 3 months.

Change: up 77,657

Page Views per user for Innovationsinnewspapers.com. The number of unique pages viewed per user per day for this site.Average in the last 3 months.

Change: up 40%

Thank you for reading.

During the presentations being made this week at the Mid-Year Media Review in New York, the statement by Reid Ashe, Media General’s CEO, sums up best what they all seem to be saying:

“The Internet is no longer an add-on. For many applications such as breaking news or, increasingly, classified advertising, it’s now our primary medium.”

Media General owns three metropolitan newspapers, 22 daily community newspapers, and more than 150 weekly newspapers and other publications, plus 23 network-affiliated television stations.

It operates 75 online enterprises aligned with those newspaper and television outlets.

I was with their top editors in Richmond, Virginia, a few months ago.

Yes, this is a big strategic shift.

As INNOVATION says all the time:

From readers to audiences.

From audiences to communities.

“At the core of our strategy is the goal of increasing our total audience in all markets.

“We are achieving this by creating a strong Internet presence, by introducing new products and services, and by continually enhancing our newspapers and television stations,” said Marshall N. Morton.

And why such attention on the Internet?

Morton is looking for $40 million in online revenues this year, growing to $50 million next year.

“Going forward, we are focusing increasingly on display and rich media ads from local and national advertisers.

“These categories have grown 65% and 104% respectively, in 2007,” Morton said at the New York meeting.

So… traditional media know that there is no other option: the digital multimedia transition is the only way.

(Thanks to Claude Erbsen in New York)