Updated Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009 at 11:40 EST
TAKEAWAY: It is a new and improved city of Bogotá—-cleaner, safer,greener, with the new Transmilenio mass transportation system and soon new Metro. In addition, the commuters have 10 newspapers to choose from as they make their way to work each day. PLUS: Pure Design download: The look of South America
ADN, a free newspaper aimed at a higher level audience, new entry into the Colombian newspaper market
Here is an ADN distribution stand: one finds those all over the city, in areas where commuters congregate
The ADN phenomenon in Colombia
We all love happy newspaper stories. In Colombia, the big headline is the success of the free distribution daily, ADN, which has captured the minds and hearts of those young readers every newspaper globally would like to seduce.
ADN is now the second most read daily in Bogota, with 654,400 readers, and almost one million nationally. What is more interesting, ADN is attracting to print those elusive young readers—-the digital natives—-who seldom come to print. El Tiempo is the market leader with 833,900 daily readers in Bogota alone.
Here is how Andres Mompotes Lemos, managing editor for information, El Tiempo, the parent newspaper of the company that owns ADN, explains the phenomenon:
ADN attracts people not used to reading in print. I teach at the university, and I see all the students carrying their copy of ADN, and realizing that, indeed, they enjoy reading a newspaper and not just online. ADN is very graphic, with very useful city-oriented content, tons of young columnists. But, for all of us in journalism here in Colombia, the real surprise is that the popular press generally is having a boom. Popular newspapers nationally are doing well. We were never a country where popular press did well. Now it does, and ADN leads the pack by far.”
For the editor of ADN, Jose Fernando Millan Cruz, the success of his newspaper is based on a simple formula:
ADN attracts people NOT used to read newsapapers in print. We have university students discovering print. How do we do it? We put ourselves in the shoes of the reader: his likes, dislikes, what he wants to read about. We never have political stories on page one, the others do that. And we are gender neutral, a newspaper with appeal to young men and women.
ADN’s readership are between 20 and 40 years old. The newspaper publishes four distinct, highly localized editions daily. The editor tells me that front page and inside pages change to reflect the news stories from each region, and even the language used in headlines reflects the way people in each region speak.
Today’s ADN for Bogota and Cali editions
Today’s ADN for Barranquilla and Medellin regions
Bogotá: one of the world’s most competitive newspaper markets
El Tiempo (center), almost 100 years old, and the country’s leading newspaper, along with regional dailies El Pais (Cali) and El Heraldo (Barranquilla). Both El Pais and El Heraldo have undergone extensive redesigns in the past two yerars
Bogota’s El Espectador has changed to a tabloid format, but aims at a sophisticated audience.
El Colombiano, of Medellin, promotes digital media forcefully through its print edition, especially on its Page Two, seen here, which it calls Conectividad (Connectivity)
ADN and Hoy, both tabloids, are part of El Tiempo. ADN aims at a sophisticated audience; HOY is directed toiwards a mass market
It is a totally different city of Bogotá: clean, safe, very green and beautiful
It has been four years since I last came to visit Bogotá, this buzzling Colombian capital with over 7 million population. Of course, it takes four years for most of us in the United States to get our first college degree. Well, if cities go to college, then Bogotá has applied herself fully, got the scholarship, pulled the all nighters, took all the hard courses, and has emerged not just degreed, but pedigreed.
This is a new Bogota, and what a joy it is to be part of it, for at least a week, working with El Tiempo, the leading newspaper of Colombia, and one of Latin America’s top dailies, with a rich, almost 100-year history of high caliber journalism and service to the country and its citizens. Over the past 24 years, I have visited El Tiempo from time to time to perform a variety of tasks: the complete redesign, the occasional tweaking, or what El Tiempo President Luis Fernando Santos refers to as a “face wash”. We do it again now, taking a look at how the entire operation functions.
If the new Bogota is impressive (I can now run outdoors in the well kept parks, something you could not do four years ago—but keeping the runs shorter since Bogota is
2,546 meters or 8,355 feet above sea level), then the enhancements to the physical structure of El Tiempo are even more so. Convergence is the architectural/journalistic theme at El Tiempo, and the newsroom is a textbook model of how to arrange the working space to allow for everything and everyone to converge, exchange ideas, and, if need be, walk to the CityTv set and do a show.
View of El Tiempo building in Bogota
The newly revamped newsroom of El Tiempo, which has created an environment that leads to total convergence of a multiplatform media house
Design and the Colombian newspaper landscape
There are now 10 newspapers published daily in Bogotá, offering readers a variety of options——from the quality, classic newspapers, to the smart free newspaper , to the downmarket tabs.
Design has made a grand entrance into the newsrooms of Colombian newspapers lately. The regional dailies, El Pais (Cali) and El Heraldo (Barranquilla), and Bogota’s El Espectador have undergone dramatic design changes, all for the better.
At El Tiempo, their strategic alliance with Editorial Planeta (Spain) in 2007, has added an additional title, ADN, a sophisticated free newspaper that is one of the fastest growing newspapers in the country—-distributed not only in Bogota, but in Cali and Medellin as well. There is an ADN in Barcelona, as well.
I am very impressed by what I see here, a media house in constant evolution and, for sure, one of the world’s most advanced in its technical resources, not to mention the management’s desire to make sure that the next 100 years of El Tiempo are as successful and service-oriented as the first.
Here is a list of the 10 dailies that are published in Bogotá:
El Tiempo, El Espectador, ADN, Hoy, Portafolio (Financial), La Republica, El Espacio, Qué Hubo?, El Periódico, El Nuevo Siglo. Of these, two are broadsheets (El Tiempo and El Periódico), La Republica is a Berliner, and the rest all tabloids
Pure Design:The look of South America
The following links, from the WAN/IFRA Executive News Service offer glimpses into how the industry moves today:
– USA: Report: Newspaper website traffic on the upswing
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-taking-the-plunge-how-newspaper-sites-that-charge-are-faring/
The Impact of the Compact
Pure Design: Download entire section: Type
Download entire first section of Pure Design: Words
Now that I have fully presented the first of six sections of Pure Design on TheMarioBlog, I am offering the entire initial section, “Words,” available for download—all 33 pages of it. This may be useful for those of you saving or printing out Pure Design and will be done following each of the remaining sections. At the end of our journey through words, type, layout, color, pictures, and process, I will publish the entirety of Pure Design in one file.
Who is Jacky?
Jacky belongs to Frank Deville. The Luxembourg-based pooch is an “avid reader” of the German newspaper, Bild Am Sonntag. Every Sunday Jacky picks stories and interesting graphics in Bild Am Sonntag , the German newspaper.
WAN’s World Trends 2009 Report
The 2009 edition of World Press Trends from WAN/IFRA is now available. I always like to review this report for its complete information on global circulation, advertising and online trends in our industry. All countries in the world where daily newspapers are published are covered in the publication.
This year the WAN/IFRA folks have decided to publish a print version but only make the book available on pdf.
Those interested go:
http://www.wan-press.org/forms/wpt2009.html
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Follow the Marios
Two Marios. Two Views.
Follow Mario Jr. and his blog about media analysis, web design and assorted topics related to the current state of our industry.
http://garciainteractive.com/
Visit Mario Sr. daily here, or through TweetsByDesign (www.twitter.com/tweetsbydesign)
In Spanish daily: The Rodrigo Fino blog
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To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
TheMarioBlog posting #352