WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

I spoke yesterday at the Bergen Media Festival.

More than 200 people in a full and crowed room with dozens of people standing in the corridors and in the back of the auditorium.

That was good news because next door and at the same time Elizabeth Murdoch was speaking about creativity.

My 60 minute presentation kay-messages to the Norwegian newspaper editors:

-This is time to invest, change and innovate.

-Just “saving and cutting” will not solve your problems.

-You need courage to lead the digital media transition.

-Full newsroom integration is a must if you don’t want to end with a ghetto company.

-New young generations are not buying your paper because they don’t see compelling content in your print editions.

-Your papers are full of irrelevant content: too much of noting.

-The iPad will not solve your problems if what you do is what you did with the news websites.

-The adoption of new digital narratives are the biggest challenge facing your newsrooms.

-Invest in your newsrooms but only if they change.

Jeff Jarvis spoke later to the same audience live from New York with his standard negative and pessimistic messages and nothing new to say.

A media blogger asked him to be more practical and less generic with his ideas.

My feeling was that Norwegian editors want real change and they don’t buy negative outlooks.

This is the best European market for newspapers and they don’t accept that newspapers will die.

Good journalism is alive, and these editors are ready to change and innovate.

Vikings are tough fighters!

Like the Mexican pandemic flu, the volcano ashes from Iceland are becoming a nightmare.

So the Mandarins are canceling all the flights in the UK and many other European countries.

Who’s in charge in this mess?

Nobody except the Mandarins!

Look below at the last map released by the British Met Office.

As you can see, no ashes over the UK.

So why the airplanes cannot fly?

Why Jeff Jarvis was able to fly today from Munich?

Why between 100 and 120 airplanes crossed today the Atlantic and landed in Europe?

And more dramatic, in the Civil Aviation Forum, one reader says:

“The previous eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, whose ash cloud has shut down airspace over Britain, lasted for more than a year, according to an expert.”

The chaos is affecting to everybody:

The German secretary of defence was today on his way back from Afghanistan with five seriously wounded German soldiers on board (four others were killed) and it is not known where the Airbus A310 was be able to land in Germany with those medical emergencies who need urgent treatment.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be diverted to Lisbon on her return from the US today – and be stranded there until tomorrow afternoon as the crew will be out hours.

What about Obama going tomorrow Saturday to the funeral in  Poland?

In today’s Observer, the editor of The Guardian writes about the iPad.

He remembers the pioneering work done by Roger Fidler.

I did the same a few months ago in one of the first posts of my blog Tabletmania.

And I agree with Alan Rusbridger: Roger saw the iPad almost 20-year ago.

Alan talks about Aspen but, no, the Colorado headquarters of the Knight-Ridder Information Design Lab were always in Boulder.

Well, I would like to see the reaction of Jeff Jarvis, a columnist of The Guardian.

The editor loves the iPad, the columnist, Mr. Google, not really.

(Picture by Katherine Rose, illustration by Luis Grañena)

Jeff Jarvis, a Google fan, buys his first iPad a few hours after its launch…

Interesting.

He says that his Dean asked all the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Faculty to buy it.

So Jeff is another early adopter.

His last Twitter:

Will the iPad count as a computer I have to put through airport security separately? Or like a iPhone or Kindle can it stay in a bag?

On ABC News he said:

“Apple is Apple and they amaze us and give us new ways to look at the world, so I await the wow of touching and using the iPad,..But the iPad isn’t going to change the economics of all media. It’s not the tablet coming down from Mt. Sinai.”

Well, let’s wait and see.

We don’t need more prophets.

We need digital narrative content editors, producers and designers.

As I said this morning in this blog:

The new digital bottle is here.

But the new digital narrative content is not yet.

Yes, the Apple Tablet, “Slate” or “Guide” is coming.

Like the ones from HP, Dell and others.

But, let’s remember a few basic ideas:

1. The problem is the quality, exclusivity and accessibility of our content, not the platforms.

2. Kindle or Apple tablet are not the solutions.

3. As Jeff Jarvis said: “Newspaper publishers must unleash their news on every device possible. No single gadget will be their saviour”

So, information does need “paper jails” nor new technological jails.

What we need to worry is not about these new devices, but the old assembly-line-one deadline-one platform newsroom management system that still prevails in 99% of our newspapers.

We need more “one kitchen, several restaurants” newsroom multimedia models.

We need to focus in multimedia content management.

We need to migrate from media companies to “information engines.”

And from readers to audiences and communities.

Technology is not the problem, nor the solution.

So, welcome the tablets, and better if they become as soon as possible rubber tablets.

And let’s concentrate in how to migrate from monomedia to multimedia newsrooms.

Be ready!