Axel Springer Verlag
Faced with changing conditions in the media market, the Axel Springer Verlag reevaluated business strategies and relaunched some of its strong brands on a cross-media platform.
The current climate has top managers at newspapers and media companies worldwide asking tough questions – of themselves, their staffs and their technology providers. How do we serve the consumer demand for real-time news at any time of day through the channels most convenient to our customers? Can we offer our advertisers the ability to launch campaigns on multiple digital platforms? With readership and advertising income dropping, how do we save money without sacrificing the quality of our products?
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One of Axel Springer’s properties, WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST, asked those questions and many others, and responded with radical measures. Beginning in 2002, the group set out to redefine itself internally and in relation to the market. Renowned for publishing newspapers, the media house adopted a new strategy, “From newspaper brand to media brand.” The goal was clearly defined: All editorial and advertorial products of the group should be made available through all publication channels – print or online – depending on the requirements of the individual customer. Through the strength of brands like DIE WELT, with a reputation of trustworthy, quality journalism, and with a communication strategy developed in collaboration with IFRA, Springer planned to achieve this “media brand”. And to pursue a customer-oriented approach, Axel Springer management envisioned a relationship with the public with much more direct dialogue and immediate interaction, a purpose not served very well by the printed newspaper, but indigenous to the new digital media. A key element in the new cross-media approach and ensuing business plan was an advertising strategy allowing for multichannel campaigns answering the demand from today’s advertisers. |
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You can create a strategy and business plans. Bringing it all to life is quite a different matter. For WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST, the new strategy brought changes at almost all levels in the organization. The biggest was the introduction of the “integrated newsroom.” Since 2002, the CCI editorial system had allowed multiple titles to coexist on the same system in Berlin, and in the case of DIE WELT and BERLINER MORGENPOST, Axel Springer had profited from this coexistence by letting the two titles share some of the desks. So sharing content within the print media was already a fact of life in the Springer building. But the creation of the integrated newsroom took this a step further. The one-to-one relationship between desks and newspaper was dissolved, and from that point on, one Politics desk, one Business desk, etc., has been serving all titles. Most importantly, as an integral part of their workflow these desks also serve the digital media: online, mobile and IP-TV. The editorial strategy is formulated through the credo “Online first.” Reserving a news story for the next day’s print publication is no longer the normal procedure. Located in a room above the individual desks, the integrated newsroom serves as the communication and decision platform for the selection of themes to cover in the cross-media offerings of the group. By facilitating immediate and easy communication between the individual titles both in print and digital media, it is ensured that the basic challenge of cross-media publishing – under which brand to publish which content through which channel – can be addressed most efficiently. |
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The latest addition is HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT, hosted on the same CCI system that serves BERLINER MORGENPOST, DIE WELT, WELT am SONNTAG, WELT KOMPAKT and all related titles. The editorial data of HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT is separated from the other titles hosted on the CCI system, and all editorial users in Hamburg have access to the full functionality of the CCI system via Citrix. The process toward a consolidated platform for the publishing group has been a core activity during the long partnership with CCI that began in 1993, when CCI installed a layout system in Berlin with an integration to the existing SII editorial system. Moreover, the move from a print-centric to a cross-media strategy has been matched by a development of the CCI editorial solution from a pure layout system to a full-fledged editorial platform for cross-media publishing that enables and supports new business models for publishing houses like WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST.
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The strategy has proven successful. Print circulation has been stabilized and even increased for some products. Publications like WELT KOMPAKT have reached new readers. New business opportunities have arisen through cross-media advertising campaigns. And page impressions have soared, making WELT ONLINE Germany’s third news website, topping 200 million page impressions per month, up from 28 million in 2006. Overall productivity has increased, the complexity of the systems landscape has been reduced due to continuous consolidation of the IT infrastructure and this again has resulted in a reduction of TCO.
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Their story is not finished yet – the economy is still uncertain, new media platforms continue to evolve. But the integrated newsroom at Axel Springer and the consolidated CCI platform have WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST prepared to respond more quickly and efficiently than ever as top managers continue to ask tough questions and find creative solutions for a strong future. |
Interview - Torsten Stolz, IT coordinator and manager of workflow development
As IT coordinator and manager of workflow development within the WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST management, Torsten Stolz has been deeply involved in the implementation of the new cross-media strategy.
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Herr Stolz, to pursue a cross-media strategy, the WELT Group / BERLINER MORGENPOST chose to introduce an integrated newsroom where print, online, IP-TV and other digital services come together. Where are you in the process today? |
The integrated newsroom is now fully implemented and operational. It is manned from 6.00 to 1.30 every day, and decision makers from all desks are present to communicate about and coordinate the selection of themes to cover and not least to decide on the relevant publication channel. The fact that people are together in the same room is crucial in order to react quickly to breaking news and to decide on how to play the stories. Not least our aggressive strategy to deliver real-time news in the digital media makes this a necessity. |
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What were the challenges that you had to face during the implementation of the integrated newsroom? |
It was of course a new experience for everybody involved. To work in a room defined by its function instead of in a more personal office was a big change, and as with all changes of this kind, we have had to be patient and give people the time to find themselves in this new environment. It was from the beginning important to make absolutely clear what the reasons for introducing an integrated newsroom were and what a cross-media strategy meant. So together with IFRA, we developed a three-day course for the editorial staff, where the newsroom concept was gone through and discussed and where all the new digital concepts ranging from mobile, online communities to IP-TV were expounded. But the most important thing was to instill a mindset, meaning that whenever you are involved in the selection of themes to cover, thoughts like “here it would make sense to do something on our mobile platform” should pop up. |
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As part of a strategy to consolidate the editorial operation, the Hamburger Abendblatt has recently been moved to the data center in Berlin with the editorial users working out of Hamburg via Citrix. How did that project go? |
It was a success, and it was implemented in time and in budget. Due to the extensive knowledge about the CCI system in the company, we could to a large degree make the necessary setups ourselves together with the project team from Hamburg and with some backup and support from the CCI people. An important part of the success was of course also that the editors and other staff members from Hamburger Abendblatt took up the challenge with an open mind and a lot of commitment. Bringing together different editorial environments in a shared data center offers a lot of advantages. Centralizing IT competencies makes a lot of sense and enables us to act very quickly to changes in the market, for instance in the situation where we need to launch a new product in time-to-market. And the fact that the editorial content is available on a common platform opens up possibilities for content syndication that may prove worthwhile at some point in time. It is of course also a prerequisite that you have an editorial system which supports the coexistence of separate editorial environments on the same system, which is the case with the CCI system. |
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The partnership between Axel Springer and CCI goes back to the early ’90s. What role has this partnership played for you? |
Over many years, we have established an excellent partnership with CCI, a company which we consider a reliable partner with first-class competence within newsroom workflow technologies and system integration. Moreover, CCI is a very reliable partner when it comes to being available and willing to address issues that may arise. From our point of view, when it comes to the implementation of huge systems including functionality allowing for efficient content syndication and interaction with other systems, the CCI system and CCI as a partner represent the right choice. Moreover, some of the concepts now built into CCI’s editorial offerings can certainly be traced back to our input, which is quite natural for a good partnership. When undertaking radical changes in the organization and in the editorial workflows, it is extremely important to work with a systems vendor who understands and supports the strategic direction that you are taking. |
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You have been through a period of extensive changes within the organization and on the systems side, but you will surely be facing new challenges in the coming years. What will they be? |
Changing is like learning – you should not stop doing it. I think we will continue to see a strong diversification of products in the market, and the number of publication channels will increase. We need to be able to react quickly to these changes in the market. From a technological point of view, we have taken some important steps forward. It is, however, important that we already now start thinking about how we one day might go all the way in terms of implementing a truly consolidated content base. Even if tightly integrated, we still have three silos in our editorial system today: Print, online and archive, between which editorial content may be exchanged through manual user interaction. So we need to start thinking about a next step where these silos could be brought together in a sensible manner for the user. And today we still do not have technological support for things like storage and exchange of background material, automated suggestions for related material, collaboration between members of a team working on a special theme, etc. which is something we will take a close look at in the future |
Statements
When we changed WELT GRUPPE / BERLINER MORGENPOST into a cross-media operation, we achieved high efficiency results. Our CCI editorial data cente