WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Let’s face it.

Many newspapers look today like a daily morgue.

A compilation of dead news bodies.

Well presented, but dead.

And our newsrooms spend time and time just to collect, embellish and organise the daily morgue.

Yes, we do some forensic journalism too, but it’s too little, to late.

Instant analysis is done more and more by websites, blogs and wire services.

So, what’s the role of a daily newspaper?

Not to be a news morgue.

Not to be forensic media

But “Prognosis Media.”

Diagnostics are not needed in newspapers after dead news are in front of us.

Again, it’s to late.

What our readers need and want in print or in tablets is “Slow Cooking Journalism.”

Not just telling us what we already know, but “Forward Journalism.”

Print and tablet news journalists are needed to advise and prevent.

Welcome to the “Strategic Journalism” preached in the 1980′s by pioneers like Claude Monnier.

Welcome to INNOVATION’s “Caviar Journalism.”

INNOVATION adds today another unique editorial and graphic redesign to its list of worldwide list of newspapers.

This time in Huelva (Andalusia, Spain) with ODIEL, a regional newspaper that competes wit other local, regional and national newspapers, magazines, radio, television and new media.

So INNOVATION’s proposal was be more local than ever, be more glocal than ever.

Main changes: bold logo, fresh front page, easy to read typography, playing loud a big local/glocal story (the new immigrants in a region of emigrants).

Congratulations to the fantastic ODIEL team lead by its editor Agustín Samaniego and publisher Juan España, and to Javier, Giordano, Carlos, Mauri, Roberto, Luis and Ale, and a very young and creative newsroom that were helping INNOVATION’s Antonio Martin and Miguel Angel Jimeno to launch a more unique and compelling newspaper.

Above is today’s new front page, and below the old one.

More, later.

In a candid Paris Review interview, John Cheever was asked:

“Have you always been a writer, or have you had other jobs?”

“I drove a newspaper truck once. I liked it very much, especially during the World Series, when the Quincy paper would carry the box scores and full accounts. No one had radios, or television—which is not to say that the town was lit with candles, but they used to wait for the news; it made me feel good to be the one delivering the good news.

(Via David Alvarez)

In yesterday’s Guardian editorial, a great observation regarding to Lord Mandelson memoirs:

“The second thing to emerge is the depressing absence of any interest in ideas.

Of all the books to come out of the Labour years – by David Blunkett, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Mo Mowlam, Lance Price and co – not a single one makes a sustained intellectual case for Labour government.

There is no passionate debate about the party’s future possibilities; nothing brave or provocative.”

A knockout message for politicians, political parties… and, yes, for newspapers too.

Many newspapers look like old cathedrals without soul.

Old bottles… with no wine inside.

And Earl Wilkinson is right too: “Empty newspaper brands don’t age like wine”

Tom Peters FFF mantra fits very well with the need of experimentation for any company that wants to lead the iPad revolution:

“Fail. Forward. Fast”

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!

The Newark (New Jersey) Star-Ledger newsroom.

A traditional newsPAPER newsroom.

The Calau&Riera INNOVATION‘s i newsroom in Lisbon.

A new multiMEDIA newsroom.

The past versus the future.

We are surrounded by commodity news media.

The same news.

The same stories.

The same opinions.

The same pictures.

The same graphics.

The same design.

So readers don’t care anymore about brands that deliver the same content.

That’s the reason that if you want to be relevant, if you want to charge for your content, you must be different.

And you must have EXCLUSIVE content.

Exclusive breaking news.

Unique stories.

On print.

On line.

All time.

Full time.

This is the challenge for any newspaper.

And for any news web site.

The Business Insiders knows that.

It’s a crazy web site, but they are aware about this new trend.

Greg Hadfield, Telegraph Media Group’s head of digital development, is leaving the company.

He explains here the reasons in The Guardian.

A good reading for any “Monolithic Media” gang.

He ends with a great message: the time for innovation and change is running out.

A serious call.

To survive, newspapers need to rethink radically not only their business models, but also how they manage their businesses; they need to overhaul outdated organisational structures; they need to consider how they relate to all their employees, to third-party providers of content and services, and to individuals with whom they may have no contractual arrangement whatsoever.

Most crucially, they need to rethink how they relate to their communities of readers, subscribers, and users, when they know next to nothing about members of their digital audience. They need to identify their most loyal users and then work harder to meet their individual needs.

No longer can newspapers survive by publishing at their readers, by talking down to them, by controlling what can and can’t be written or said. In future, they will have to provide – and share, not “own” – the online environment in which they can meet the needs of individual members of their community. They have to be part of social media, not monolithic media.

But for those newspapers that survive, it is going to be a long journey. Who knows how long? I suggested radical innovation may take five years … because the future always seems to be five years away.

At 53, however, I don’t have as much time as many to wait for the future. I want to help make it happen now.

(Picture by Graham Turner)