Read newspaper everywhere immediately
Internet newspapers More and more Swiss publishers are hoping that in the future their readers will no longer fetch their favorite newspaper from the mailbox every day, but from the Internet. Because that will save costs enormously.
More and more Swiss publishers are hoping that in the future their readers will no longer fetch their favorite newspaper from the mailbox every day, but from the Internet. The NZZ and the Basler Zeitung (BaZ) have been demonstrating for some time what the book industry has long since discovered for itself, namely printing books to order: Anyone who wants to read one of these dailies while abroad can have it printed out for a fee in around 400 hotels. "Print on demand" (POD) is the name of the service, in which newspaper data is transmitted via the Internet to hotels, where it is printed on an A3 printer. One difference remains: Those who request the NZZ receive the complete 48-page foreign edition, including advertising pages. With the BaZ, you currently only receive editorial pages. As a consequence, the NZZ can have its copies certified by the AG für Werbemedienforschung (Wemf), while the BaZ cannot (see box). But NZZ publishing director Tobias Trevisan says, "These are not immense numbers." Nor is the NZZ concerned with bolting on circulation. Rather, they simply want to "ensure the availability of the current NZZ edition worldwide.
This is precisely the claim that other Swiss publishers hardly see fulfilled with POD. What they have in mind is global availability: Their paper should be available at all times, both at work and at home, on the sandy beach and in the mountain hut, in the desert and on a sailing trip. And subito.
For this reason, numerous newspapers around the world have started to supply their content, including advertisements, to providers who act like an Internet kiosk. One of them is called Newsstand (www.newsstand .de). Since November 2002, it has been the only such provider currently approved for certification by the German Wemf counterpart IVW. At Newsstand, you can download a newspaper of your choice - so far, there is no Swiss paper among them - in the form of a PDF file to your PC - provided you have a subscription with a password from the publisher. Newsstand works on a commission basis.
The disadvantage of this procedure: The data volumes are huge (7 to 15 megabytes); a download requires a lot of storage space and time. The latter is shortened thanks to ADSL, but such connections are still thin on the ground.
Although the disadvantages still outweigh the benefits, Swiss publishers are also pursuing similar projects. First and foremost Ringier, AZ Medien and the NZZ. However, while Trevisan will not say anything about the status of the project at NZZ, the Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) and Ringier are more talkative. Ringier primarily wants to increase the availability of Cash and Blick/SonntagsBlick and is considering distributing these titles via Newsstand. "Newsstand told us that about two percent additional copies could be sold this way. But we would also be satisfied with just one percent, because we don't incur any additional costs," says André März, Head of Technology and IT. The prerequisite, however, is that these copies are also certified. However, Wemf will not decide on this until April.
The situation is different at AZ: Here, they are talking about the e-paper project. "We want to get it up and running by the middle of the year, but definitely before the end of 2003," says Peter Buri, a member of the company management. The idea is to have a kind of PDF newspaper on the company's own homepage. An e-paper edition can be broken down into its constituent parts. "We don't expect any big jumps in circulation," says Buri. More important is the possibility of making the ten AZ regional editions or an archive accessible to readers.
What is still a project at AZ is partly already being implemented at Cooperazione, the Italian version of the Coop newspaper (coop.tio.ch). The free paper does not have to answer a question that daily newspapers always face: How much should an online subscription cost? As an aside, the German Rheinzeitung (www.rhein-zeitung.de) also offers something similar, for a fee, but also with a trial version on its website.
Wemf will decide in April on the certification of e-papersNewspapers that are obtained via "print on demand" can be credited to the print circulation according to Wemf if they meet two conditions: They must be identical to the printed edition (including advertising pages). And a separate subscription must be paid for them. The same will probably apply to the sale of newspaper content from the Internet, said Christel Plöger, who is responsible for circulation certifications at Wemf. But the Commission for Circulation and Dissemination will not decide on this until April, she added. (mk)
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This is precisely the claim that other Swiss publishers hardly see fulfilled with POD. What they have in mind is global availability: Their paper should be available at all times, both at work and at home, on the sandy beach and in the mountain hut, in the desert and on a sailing trip. And subito.
For this reason, numerous newspapers around the world have started to supply their content, including advertisements, to providers who act like an Internet kiosk. One of them is called Newsstand (www.newsstand .de). Since November 2002, it has been the only such provider currently approved for certification by the German Wemf counterpart IVW. At Newsstand, you can download a newspaper of your choice - so far, there is no Swiss paper among them - in the form of a PDF file to your PC - provided you have a subscription with a password from the publisher. Newsstand works on a commission basis.
The disadvantage of this procedure: The data volumes are huge (7 to 15 megabytes); a download requires a lot of storage space and time. The latter is shortened thanks to ADSL, but such connections are still thin on the ground.
Although the disadvantages still outweigh the benefits, Swiss publishers are also pursuing similar projects. First and foremost Ringier, AZ Medien and the NZZ. However, while Trevisan will not say anything about the status of the project at NZZ, the Aargauer Zeitung (AZ) and Ringier are more talkative. Ringier primarily wants to increase the availability of Cash and Blick/SonntagsBlick and is considering distributing these titles via Newsstand. "Newsstand told us that about two percent additional copies could be sold this way. But we would also be satisfied with just one percent, because we don't incur any additional costs," says André März, Head of Technology and IT. The prerequisite, however, is that these copies are also certified. However, Wemf will not decide on this until April.
The situation is different at AZ: Here, they are talking about the e-paper project. "We want to get it up and running by the middle of the year, but definitely before the end of 2003," says Peter Buri, a member of the company management. The idea is to have a kind of PDF newspaper on the company's own homepage. An e-paper edition can be broken down into its constituent parts. "We don't expect any big jumps in circulation," says Buri. More important is the possibility of making the ten AZ regional editions or an archive accessible to readers.
What is still a project at AZ is partly already being implemented at Cooperazione, the Italian version of the Coop newspaper (coop.tio.ch). The free paper does not have to answer a question that daily newspapers always face: How much should an online subscription cost? As an aside, the German Rheinzeitung (www.rhein-zeitung.de) also offers something similar, for a fee, but also with a trial version on its website.
Wemf will decide in April on the certification of e-papersNewspapers that are obtained via "print on demand" can be credited to the print circulation according to Wemf if they meet two conditions: They must be identical to the printed edition (including advertising pages). And a separate subscription must be paid for them. The same will probably apply to the sale of newspaper content from the Internet, said Christel Plöger, who is responsible for circulation certifications at Wemf. But the Commission for Circulation and Dissemination will not decide on this until April, she added. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli
