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Mar. 12th Germany’s Welt am Sonntag: some like it compact

Update #3: Friday, 09:52AM, EST: This Friday blog will be updated throughout the weekend, so come back and check it out

TAKEAWAY: The new lighter version of Welt am Sonntag is a beauty as a compact, but if you like the style of the more traditional broadsheet, you can have that, too, with more pages.  Readers make the choice: WAMS original, or WAMS light.  PLUS: New Pit Gottschalk blog dissects newsrooms and what makes them tick COMING UP LATER: In Nigeria, how NEXT covers a tragic massacre AND: Your iPad comment of the day

iPad pre-orders are started in the United States: get that credit card out, get in line.

There are a lot of people telling someone “iPad me” today, as pre-ordering of the new gadget begins.  And the Apple Store is probably a busy place already.

I just got mine. Free shipping. Counting the days.

We are one step closer.

A thing of beauty: Welt Am Sonntag compact

 

Something new in the Sunday newspaper market in Germany.

Not necessarily a new title, but a compact version of the well known Welt am Sonntag, which now appears with two different formats: broadsheet and compact. Readers can pick what they want.

The compact premiered three Sundays ago, and it is already very popular.

“We are happy about our little project. The Welt am Sonntag kompakt is targeted to young and/or female readers, who don’t want to read every Sunday 120 pages. 64 pages seemed to be the perfect size. The first results are encouraging,“ says Ulf Poschardt, editor in chief.

The design of the new WAS was created by that talented and always active German designer, Anja Horn, with whom I have the honor of working now.  Anja symbolizes all the good things we associate with the classic look, the clean pages that please, with the ever present magazine style covers that are show stoppers. Many of those can be found in her new creation.  Together with her creative and fun team at Einhorn Solutions in Berlin, Anja plays those pages of the WAS like a Stradivarius violin.

“It was fun to do this, Mario,“ Anja tells me as we sip expressos in her studio, flipping pages of the past three editions of WAMS.  “Sometimes it is too many ads, but we try.“

No complaints about all those ads, Anja. The pages still look great.

At a time when so many give up on print, decide that there is no excitement to be found in anything print, here comes WAMS to give us a wake up call, send us a strong visual message and make Sundays in Germany, well, something to look forward too, even if you are not young, or a woman.

New blog on the block: worth looking

While on the subject of Germany, and Axel Springer, let me introduce you to a new blog that you will find interesting and even necessary if you are in this business.

It is written by my colleague Pit Gottschalk. Head of CEO’s Newspaper Office for Axel Springer, with whom I always enjoy discussions about the workings of the newsrooms.

That’s Pit’s academic subject, and he is one person who analyzes all that happens in those newsrooms, with interesting observations.

In his own words:

My blog was inspired by your thoughts about “the path of the story” you mentioned in your presentation at Axel Springer. The core of my academic work is to create an evaluation model how well (or badly) newspaper companies and their editorial staff are prepared for the digital age, especially for the iPad. I agree on your statement that the iPad will be a game changer and that companies should be conscious of what is going on - but most of them aren’t. I will deliver a measurement system as an analyzing tool to determine individually the degree of online integration within the newsroom in terms of structure, culture, tasks, and people in the organizational alignment. By that tool, you can easily find the points where the path for the story should be fixed, improved or even built.

You surely see the lack of effective online integration immediately by your experience and understanding of the workflow in a newsroom. But the tool delivers the empirical proof in addition to what you observe. The data helps convince chief editors that something more has to be changed to integrate the online world in the print world than in the past.

For the moment,  says Pit, he is just creating the editorial environment before revealing the results and insights of his data research which he gathers by the support of 59 chief editors in Germany. “The work itself is done,“ he says.

So follow Pit as he reveals his findings, and especially how he tells us about newsrooms adapting to fast changing technology and new platforms, as in the case of iPads and other tablets.

Here is link to Pit’s new blog:
http://www.pit-gottschalk.com/

Joe Zeff ‘s blog: views on iPad development

The iPad Puzzle Calls for Partnership
http://joezeffdesign.com/blog/

http://joezeffdesign.com/blog/

 

 

TheMarioBlog post #504

 

Posted by Dr. Mario R. Garcia on March 12, 2010