This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, April 7.
Update 1: New York City, April 4, 2014; 08:45
TAKEAWAY: A week ago Norway’s Aftenposten introduced several changes, including in its design, but also a new approach to covering news across the platforms of the media quartet. We revisit Aftenposten.
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When a news organization introduces changes, the verdict is always out as to how readers/users will react.
Aftenposten, Norway’s leading daily newspaper, introduced a series of substantial changes, including a refreshing of its great design, last week, and now we can revisit with the team to find out how readers have reacted.
While I am not at all surprised at the mostly positive reactions, it is always a positive sign when readers embrace a new product with which they are familiar and let us know so.
In my 42 years in this business, I have learned one valuable lesson: don’t close the door too soon in a new concept. Let the new product take its time to allow readers to get familiarized with it. And Aftenposten proves the point. The readers are savvy and know a good thing when they see it. That’s how they have accepted the new Aftenposten a week after it launched its new formula. But it will take about four more weeks for everyone to come to accept the new Aftenposten.
In some projects, it happens sooner, in others later.
According to Aftenposten project leader, Ronny Ruud, the fact that there hasn’t been a lot of reaction signals something positive:
“Aftenposten’s readers have a close relationship with the newspaper, and they are not afraid to speak out when there is reason to react,” Ronny said. “When we went through a total redesign in the fall 2011, there were hundreds – a storm of reactions. We replaced all the typography – included the font for body text – and we constantly had to answer inquiries from readers who threatened to terminate the subscription or send us the bill for the eye doctor.”
“This time,” he says, “we have made profound changes in how we sort and prioritize content through the two new sections. I think we with this change have hit a need in the reader for faster overview of the most important news in a more compact newspaper. At the same time the simple system for vignetting and marking of articles makes it easy to find your way around; the reader need not be in doubt about what is what.”
“Ultimately, the measure of whether this has been successful is how it translates into the number of subscribers, the number of readers and not least in advertising dollars.
The first reactions from leading ad agencies is that they like what they see. Similarly, single-copy sales is a strong indicator of how the changes hit. The preliminary figures from our marketing department is very good. The first weekend of the new newspaper is likely one of the best single-copy weekends in a long time,” Ronny said with a big smile.
The takeaways
And, whatever the readers think, for all of us in this business, there are lessons to be learned.
1. Don’t be afraid to give the printed newspaper its new place in the midst of the media quartet——not the most important, not the protagonist—but an important player in the media quartet.
2. A digitally-driven media company can also be genuinely interested in the print edition and forge ahead to give it its place in the 24/7 cycle of news.
3. Each platform has its potential, so explore it.