WHAT'S NEXT: INNOVATIONS IN NEWSPAPERS

Last week, we saw how some of the “worst offenders” explained the Osama bin Laden story with fictional graphics.

As soon as I started to post some tuitts in my Twitter account @GINER, I saw that many colleagues from many countries reacted in the same way, among them ny friend Alberto Cairo, the infographics editor of EPOCA magazine in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

With Alberto, we wrote “six basic rules” that must be observed to deliver real news with graphics.

Then I contacted Barry Sussman, an INNOVATION Senior Consultant that now serves as editor of the Harvard University Nieman Watchdog Project and he offered that website to post the “check-list” with a short article, and a first list with 58 colleagues from 22 countries immediately endorsed the statement.

Claude Erbsen in New York edited the “six rules” and Barry Sussman in Washington DC edited the full article.

A few minutes ago all this was posted at the Nieman Watchdog website with the same illustration that leads this post, as it fits the purpose and sense of this statement: the front page of the William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal “explaining” the news from Cuba.

And we included a few examples from some of the “worst offenders.”

Like this one from UOL in Brazil:

This from the Daily Mail in the UK:

This one from CBS News:

This one from ABC in Madrid:

This one from the Hindustan Times in India:

This one from NMA News in Taiwan:

Or this from JT France:

You can find an extensive selection with wise comments of Gert K Nielsen about some of the best and worst infographics in his blog VisualJournalism.

But, more important, we just wanted to stress five ideas:

• Facts ,not fiction, is what drives Journalism.
• Visual Journalism is not Show Business.
• Editors must lead this battle against fake information.
• Visual journalists must resist any pressure to deliver graphics “at any cost.”
• And infographics are not a substitute when we don’t have real information.

This what I learned from Alejandro Malofiej, Miguel Urabayen, Peter Sullivan, Mario Tascón, John Grimwade, Chiqui Esteban, Nigel Holmes or Javier Zarracina, and many of the best visual journalists of the world.

And we cannot accept less.

• If you agree with these convictions, please add your signature in the comments section of the Nieman Watchdog, spread the word between your newsrooms, and we will include your names in the next editions of this first wave of endorsements.

These will be The New Media Kings of 2011.

1. Mobile Media will rule.

2. New Multimedia Digital Narratives will be a must.

3. Tablets will be the best multimedia integrators.

4. iPad still will lead the tablet revolution.

5. Web is to surf, print to read and tablets to dive.

6. Reading is back in a big way.

7. Amazing Visual Journalism will be better than ever.

8. Newsrooms integration will accelerate.

9. iPad will become iPay.

10. Paid content will make print and digital media profitable.

And all these 10 trends can be summarized in just another one:

It’s the wine, not the bottle!

The Berliner Morgenpost publishes today a fantastic 20 page section edited by… a former president of Germany, Joachim Gauck, the anti-communist human rights activist in East Germany co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement that later became  a “Stasi hunter”, exposing the crimes of the former communist political police.

The son of a survivor of a Soviet Gulag Gauck leads today a first class edition of the Axel Springer’s paper edited by Carten Erdmann.

A real “tour de force” on how to commemorate a very unique day.

Sober but crispy design, compelling graphics, dramatic pictures… and caviar journalism at its best.

The full PDF version is here.

A paper with deep roots in visual journalism!

Roy Greensland writes a good headline:

Would Murdoch have spent £650m on a print plant if the iPad had been around?

Well, his response will be YES.

But as Burda or Rusbidger, I am sure that they know that these are tha last huge printing presses that the buy.

Printing is not our business.

Vertical integration is not the right strategy.

Universities need buildings but they don’t own construction companies.

And the cars of Ford needed tires and many years ago owned big rubber plantations in Brazil.

Yes, the 10,000 km² of land of Fordlandia!

So are the new mobile digital tablets going to be the next BIG IDEA?

Yes.

But no media company needs to become an Apple, Microsoft, Samsung or Nokia…

We are not in the bottling business.

We are in the wine business.

Content matters.

Platforms, no.

Newsprint will survive.

Printing presses will survive…

But journalism will not need them like in the past.

More cheap, green and efficient digital platforms will be available in less than three years.

So cheap that media publishers will be more than happy to give these devices free to their subscribers.

When you see than in less than 10 days the photo application of The Guardian has generated 50,000 downloads, you know that the iPad and the digital tablet are here to stay.

A few hours ago in Pamplona, the International Jury of the 18th Edition of the Malofiej Infographic Awards announced the list of the winners.

Congratulations to them and to Javier Errea and his fantastic team that every year improves tone of the finest journalistic competitions of the world.

Visual journalism at its best!

Above is the double spread of my Manifesto about Visual Journalism published last year.

Le Monde front page deserves some attention.

After several failed redesigns, now the paper seems to go backwards.

Today’s front page is an example.

Looks like the Monde that rejected pictures as a non rational content.

Well, if you want to connect with the new generations of readers, you better pay more atention to visual journalism.

Pictures matter.

Too wordy.

Back to the past.

More amazing pages from i, the new INNOVATION’s revolutionary newspaper of Portugal that excels in how to present and explain the news using the best tools of visual journalism.

Investing in hard news.

With knockout pictures.

Covering Sports with revealing and compelling interviews.

Or just splashing terrific and well edited panoramic pictures.

And small is beautiful, too.

And bold double spread pages that you never saw before.

Yes, nothing new.

Just Journalism.

Period.

The best of the best solutions for any newspaper.

And this is, for me, the biggest lesson learned from the directors and editors of i.

They are the ones that deserve the credit for this display of creativity and courage.

The INNOVATION team was only a provocateur.

They are the ones that at the end of the day implemented our crazy ideas.

Parabens!

This is a selection of some of the best pages of i.

Keep in mind that this is a six month old compact and compelling quality national newspaper of Portugal.

A real “daily-news-magazine” produced by INNOVATION for Sojormedia, with Javier Errea as the leading design consultant in this project.

A new newspaper with an editorial and graphic team of around 80 journalists, working in an “state-of-the-art” multimedia newsroom designed by INNOVATION’s partners Calau&Riera, a media architects studio based in Barcelona.

Enjoy this display of creativity, good journalism and innovation.

With colors.

Smart words.

Amazing pictures.

Outstading illustrations.

Fabulous infographics.

And new ways to present and explain the news.

Journalism Caviar!

With brilliant graphic story-telling.

With a great mix of different visual languages.

Redescovering the powerful tool of photo-essays.

Investing in illustrators and giving them full freedom.

Or using black and white pictures in a fantastic way.

More pages of i, later.

One of the reasons for the quick success of the new Eleftheros Typos has been what we heard all the time from Yianna Angelopoulos, our client and the new owner of ET:

“I want a different newspaper.

“A different one.

“A better and different newspaper!”

Well, if you know Mrs. A, these are marching orders.

And you better deliver what she wants.

So, when the skeptics told us that there was no way to do it in Greece …

That their journalists didn’t have the skills to produce a sophisticated and different newspaper.

That their editors were old-fashioned ones unable to lead a project like this.

That their designers didn’t have the skill to maintain high graphic standards .

That their printing presses had very bad reproduction and poor full color.

That INNOVATION didn’t have any idea about the traditions of the country.

And on, and on …

What we did was the opposite.

We trusted and empowered the local, journalists, editors, designers and printers.

And with the full support of Mrs. A and her first-class management team, we started a process of thinking, thinking, thinking, and training, training, training.

Full and extensive content, newsroom management, graphic and design models were produced (journalism encyclopedias)

So believe me, the new ET was not just a big idea, but a very precise and detailed project.

Gabriel Sama, Marta Botero, Javier Errea, Chiqui Esteban and Pablo Ramirez presented and implemented printed operational manuals that are the secret weapon of any INNOVATION project.

Our British production consultant (formerly with News International), Michael Fairhead was the technical watchdog.

Thanks to him and ET’s new printing presses, we got the quality reproduction that we wanted.

With excellent paper.

Yes, expensive newsprint.

At the end of the day, this was a content-driven project and nothing was purely cosmetic.

INNOVATION believes today more than ever that the newspapers of the future and the future of newspapers is in producing , like Mrs. A wanted, different and better newspapers.

High-quality journalism.

In Greece, too!

The pages that you can see here are from review, another new weekly supplement that, like the rest of the newspaper, has the same unique flavor of good content, good design and great BIG photos.

Yes, photojournalism in a BIG WAY is a terrific tool to enjoy a newspaper.

Enjoy them!