David Bauer hat am News World Summit in Paris darüber referiert, was wir bei und seit der Lancierung der TagesWoche gelernt haben. 10 Erkenntnisse im Schnelldurchlauf.
Der News World Summit des Global Editors Network ist einer der wichtigsten Journalismus-Konferenzen weltweit. Am Mittwoch, 30. Mai, habe ich an Paris in einem kurzen Referat über die Lancierung der TagesWoche gesprochen – und darüber, was wir dabei gelernt haben. Wir haben natürlich sehr viel mehr gelernt, als man in 5 Minuten erklären könnte. Hier mein Versuch, unsere Erkenntnisse mit und seit der Lancierung herunterzubrechen.
I’m here to talk about the launch of TagesWoche back in October 2011 and what we’ve learnt from it.
So what is TagesWoche? We’re a newspaper startup from Basel, Switzerland. We have a weekly newspaper and daily online coverage, all done by the same team of 19 journalists.
A couple of learnings we got from the launch.
1. People expect a lot.
We all know the story of fading interest in newspapers. But then you launch one and experience something very different. More than 4000 people have bought a subscription before they even knew what TagesWoche would be about. And they then tell you what they want you to be: very local, not very local. Focus on sports and culture, focus on economy and politics. That’s tough, because you’re busy saying „no, we can’t“ to people, but at the same time, you realise that people really care – about a newspaper. Then again…
2. People expect very little.
You know something’s wrong with the media when people are surprised and give you credit just because you reply to a question they sent you or respond to criticism they had about an article.
3. Hybrid is hard.
What we try to do is this: Like a hybrid car does with its engine, we try to use the platform that is best suited for a particular story. That’s why everyone in our team works for both online and print. But getting journalists to really think in terms of stories, to start working on a story, not knowing where it will be published, is a shift we yet have to make. So even though everyone works both for online and print, it’s often like: okay, now I’m working for print, now for online.
4. Get your staff to tweet.
Up until recently, it wasn’t common for Swiss journalists to be on Twitter. We «forced» all our editors to join Twitter. And I’ve found that – apart for all the practical value – it was the best way for us to help them understand how the web works, how it changes journalism. Twitter teaches you about pace, about dialogue, about information flows – also about making mistakes and being open about them.
5. From the community, you get what you deserve.
The one things that astonished me the most in this project so far is the high quality of user contributions we get. The main reasons for this: We require everyone to sign up even to comment, thus keeping out the trolls. We prominently showcase good reader contributions, thus setting a bar and showing that’s it’s worth the effort. And most importantly: Our editors join in discussions and show that they care.
6. My phone has a browser?
We had to learn this the hard way. We didn’t launch with a native app, but with a website optimised for all kinds of mobile devices. We thought, still think, this is the way to go. But people complained that they couldn’t read us on their mobiles. They checked the app store, didn’t find us, and concluded that we didn’t exist on mobile devices. Once we showed them the browser solution, most of them were both surprised and satisfied.
7. Explain the news.
We often got the feedback, interestingly enough often from fellow journalists, that we need to have more news on our site. But when we look at what people are actually reading and sharing the most, it’s always when we go beyond news. When we comment and add background – when we explain the news. So for news, we curate a lot and send people away. And they come back to us to have the news explained. On to probably the most important learning from the launch…
8. There’s never enough time for all ten things you planned.
Thank you very much.