WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

ARA is the name for the new Catalan multi-platform newspaper to be launch in Barcelona on Monday November 25. 28

Small format and short pagination (40-48)  during weekdays and trying to produce a big weekend edition.

The founders will present the new paper formula next Tuesday October 26 but many details, including its own Manifesto, have been released here.

Like the new British “i” newspaper, ARA wants to reach a new generation of Catalan newspaper readers and non readers with a slick, crispy, trendy and compelling print brand with many electronic news extensions.

The goal is really modest and realistic (11,000 copies in the first year) but the founders expect more than that.

Keep in mind that the almost 8-million Catalonia market is smaller but richer than the 10-million Portuguese one where “i” sells more than this figure.

They are investing less than 9-million euro and they the business plan expects to break-even in four years.

The less than 100-journalist newsroom will have very young reporters and the top editors are also a new generation of journalists, lead by Carles Capdevila as editor in chief, Joan Alegre as publisher and Oriol Soler as president of ARA.

INNOVATION was approached by the founders of ARA interested in many of our most recent projects, including the Portuguese “i”, which multimedia newsroom visited in Lisbon, but we have not been involved in any way.

They told us that the ARA project will share many of our ideas (“compact and compelling newspapers”, “caviar journalism”, “daily-news-magazines”, “”30/30 newspapers”. “why and what’s next newspapers”, “show don’t tell journalism”) and the same with the integrated multimedia newsroom concepts that INNOVATION working with our Calau&Riera media architect partners have developed in many countries like the most recent one for India Today in New Delhi.

With more than 19,000 fans on Facebook and more than 3,000 followers on Twitter ARA is promoting the new paper with several viral marketing tools including pre-launch presentations across Catalonia.

Is this new paper going to be a real competitor of La Vanguardia, El Periodico de Catalunya, Punt Diari or Avui?

I don’t think so, but they better pay attention to all these grassroots tactics.

Newspapers are as strong as their connections with readers, audiences and communities are.

And ARA is doing this very well.

If the product delivers this kind of new post-news quality journalism and avoids the temptation to become another political partisan newspaper, ARA could find space and become a viable model.

So, again, like with the new “i” project in the UK, welcome to ARA and to any new paper willing to innovate and offer quality journalism, in English or in Catalan, because around the world there is only one journalism language: the good one.a

UPDATE: A few, and not very impressive, front page proptotypes.

“No party can succeed in today’s world unless it’s also about wealth creation.”

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“Having a valet unpack your suitcase is very odd,” he says, shaking his head as if he didn’t enjoy the cosseting. “Old Labour used to talk about the working class and upper class, but staying with the royal family made me realise I’m definitely middle class.”

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“One of my views in politics is don’t make enemies deliberately because you end up making so many accidentally,” he muses.

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He is clear that Brown didn’t have the psychological equipment, or the smile, for the job. “He was never going to be user-friendly in the way that modern politics demands, but he could have won the election as a big, serious person.” Blair’s great fear is that the new Labour project died with his leadership.

Tony Blair: Exile from main street

Three years after he quit No 10, has the dust settled for Tony Blair? He talks candidly with Lesley White about Brown, Bush, Iraq and the world he has left behind

A brilliant interview, in today Sunday Times Magazine, worth to subscribe to all the pay walls of the world.

(Pictures by Harry Borden)

The upcoming memoirs of Lord Mandelson, The Third Man, are a big event here in the UK.

And The Limes of London is playing big too with a great coverage that includes this double spread with a great illustration.

Rupert Murdoch is following the successful LIFE formula of Henry Luce: serializing great books sell magazines… and newspapers.

The print edition is a must-read but what it’s more important is the extra-work done on the website and iPad with videos, graphics and more information that Murdoch wants you to pay for.

I just went to my local Press Agent and asked about today’s papers sales, and my newspaper guru said:

The Times? Sold out in one hour!

Well done!

Pictures taken in Wales (UK) with my iPhone at 6:35 pm today afterthe Evening Song in St. Davids Cathedral.

Ash cloud?

What are you talking about?

Look at these pictures!

No editing.

No retouching.

Nothing.

Niente.

Nada.

Blue skies, darling.

Really blue.

But the Mandarins say that airplanes cannot fly.

Shame to them!

A British gentleman answers this question in the PPRuNe Forum:

How can we have a position on one side of the channel shich is so vastly different to that in continental Europe?

“For the same reason you they still drive on the left, use imperial measures, use sterling, do the longest brieffings in the industry… The UK has many good things but common sense is not at the top of the list. They probably think they are safer than anyone else, but in everyone else’s eyes the fact is the country is isolated by air… Remember it is an island.”

Well this is now becoming a fight between us and them.

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?

This FT’s interactive guide is simple, clear and well done.

The summary of the three Manifestos is another example of how newspapers need to go much more further.

Yes, we need to know the programs of each party.

But more important, we need to know:

What’s realistic.

What’s just propaganda.

So the facts plus the critical analysis.

The news behind the news.

Beyond the news, intelligence.

UPDATE: The Times of London goes an extra mile with the fact checker

That’s better.

Good visual journalist be alert!

How do you believe in these maps when the information is not very good?

Look at the first ones and you will see how unreliable they are.

This will be a great challenge for my infographic friends.

But they will end doing a good job.

You will see.

The BBC has done this basic one:

Anoher version with the same data posted by the European edition of The Wall Street Journal website from the U.K. Met Office with an illustration of the volcanic ash dispersion from the surface to 20,000 feet, issued at 6 a.m. on Thursday.

According to The Times of London the red line on this map of the level of ash shows the exent of debris between surface and 20,000 feet

A late arrival from The New York Times.

And The Telegraph included this picture from a real-time radar image showing all aircraft movements in UK airspace at 9.30am today.

The image from www.radarvirtuel.com shows how ash from the Icelandic volcano stopped all flights in the northern parts of UK.

Here you can see who is flying in Europe… with IUK air space as no-fly-zone.

Lainformacion.com in Spain has a bigger map with more or less the same data.

Lainformacion.com’s logo gets some of the ashes too…

El Pais in Madrid shows the Meteosat 9 images and this the best way to understand the size and impact of the volcanic ashes.

From AFP

And in Twitter going to ashes you can see this incredibly beautiful picture

The BBC offers this fantastic pictures saying:

An image made available by NEODASS/University of Dundee which shows the volcanic ash plume from Iceland, top left, to the north of Britain as received by NASA’s Terra Satellite at 11.39 GMT Thursday April 15, 2010. Photo: NEODAAS/University of Dundee/AP

More, later.

David Sullivan thinks that the old department stores fate is a good reminder  for newspapers.

And the same lessons can be learned by newspapers from the railway industry.

Today, The Guardian presents the ambitious plans of the British transport secretary Lord Andrew Adonis with this lead:

There was a time when all the world firsts in rail took place in the UK – the first modern locomotive, the first intercity line and the first train-travelling monarch. That time, however, was the second quarter of the 19th century, and for very many years now Britain’s railways have, as it were, been stuck on the slow train. No principally domestic mainline has been built in over a century, and the spread of high-speed services – from Japan in the 1960s through France in the 80s to Spain in the 90s – has all but failed to reach these shores.

Yes, there was a time… when railways ruled the transport world, like newspapers ruled the information business.

But cars and airplanes came as more fast and convenient options.

And the railway industry didn’t react,and died in many markets and in many countries.

Until the fast trains resurrected the old business.

It took time, money and courage… and the results are here.

Fantastic and very comfortable new trains rule again in many European countries.

Investing in fast trains is like investing in the new “online-centric” news organizations of the future.

And as The Guardian says:

The lesson is plain: build it – and they will come.

(Picture by Getty Images)

You can watch LIVE streaming coverage here of the Olympic Torch run in San Francisco, beginning at 1 p.m. (Pacific Time) on Wednesday, April 9th.

And breaking news from London: Gordon Brown, UK’s Primer Minister, will NOT attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in China.

(Photo by AFP)