The Return of the Views Paper

24 Mar The Return of the Views Paper

PRINT IS NEARING ITS LAST Iteration in many markets around the world with the pressures of the Covid-19 years extracting a particularly heavy toll on circulation figures. As publishers accelerate plans to embrace a digital future they face a couple of major challenges:

1. Not all markets and audiences are equal in their adoption of digital consumption, especially when it comes to news. What might have worked in markets like Scandinavia over a period of several years, for instance, may still be coming across as radically new in Asia.
2. The concept of paying for news, via digital subscriptions, is still a complicated proposition to sell. Audiences can be reluctant to pay for news online when they can get it for free and as the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2022 notes, despite increases in the proportion paying for online news in a small number of richer countries (Australia, Germany, and Sweden), there are signs that overall growth may be levelling off. As print continues to fade out, the loss will be felt by news organisations both as key source of
   revenue but also as a traditional and comfortable way to connect with readers. There is a strong case to be made therefore, for a ‘bridge’ product that can usher readers into a new era of paying for news online. It brings us back around to contemplating the value of the digital replica edition and how it can be utilised effectively in this transitional time.

Old Wine, new Bottles Digital replica editions of newspapers and magazines have been called many things over the past 20 plus years, but strategic wasn’t typically one of them, Steve Chapman, Senior Vice President,

Content partnerships at Press Reader, wrote in the Insider magazine in April 2021. He noted that they have been called everything from antiquated monoliths, frozen paper editions and souped up PDFs. Indeed, these are not bad descriptions when you think of the standard “e-paper” replica that lots of publishers continue to persist with.

The fact is however, there is still a sizeable market for such products. In his article, Chapman lists out a number of benefits of having what he calls “enhanced digital replica editions” which:
l Are one of few products beyond print that generate reader revenue
l Enjoy longer engagement with readers, which has shown to reduce churn to as low as 1%
l Allow publishers to integrate digital edition technology directly into their existing feed-based iOS and Android apps, allowing them to eliminate the work and cost associated with building and maintaining two separate products in app stores
l Instill a higher willingness to pay in readers because of the psychological connection they make with the print product
l Provide publishers and editors with insightful analytics for content and readers
l Offer a sense of completion with a beginning, middle, and end; especially with magazines
l Can be integrated with live website feeds, video, audio, photo galleries, and games for a more immersive experience
l Support multiple subscription and bundling options
l Make it easy to promote content through trials, promo codes tied to discounts, and contests
l Can validate print subscribers for seamlessly transitioning them to digital
l Support archived editions and Newspaper in Education (NIE) opportunities
l Have no constraints on when or how often they’re published
l Enable publishers to cut back on print as it makes sense to them (e.g., operationally or financially) and still produce a product that people appreciate has a price point.

Writing for Poynter in late 2020, Rick Edmonds notes that e-editions were once a flawed product but are now central at several news publications, especially during the pandemiccaused ad downturn. Edmonds refers to e-editions as the “ugly ducklings” of digital news and while he doesn’t argue that they have blossomed into beautiful swans, he says they have nonetheless become central to the audience approach of several newspapers. Key to the renewed importance is the fact that many things about them have improved at a product level.

Among these, Edmonds notes for instance, is that a big flaw of e-editions – content as aged as the print paper report – is correctable and has been fixed. While still following the print edition layout, certain stories, especially late sports results, can be updated before the e-edition is published in the early morning hours.

With print deadlines being pushed back earlier and earlier in many places as chains and some independents shift printing to distant plants, a later close is a distinct plus. It is also relatively easy to offer bonus content — more games and comics, specialised sections aggregating anything from obituaries to COVID-19 coverage to local stock prices.

E-editions remain an ordeal to access and read on a smartphone, but tech improvements make navigation on a tablet or desktop relatively easy once you learn how.

Edmonds also spoke with Pete Doucette, a former audience executive at The Boston Globe who now heads an audience practice at the business strategy firm FTI Consulting.

“Let’s pretend that there is a 50-50 split (between the two formats),” Doucette said. “The e-edition is going to be the preference of most print readers … and they are likely to come back every day — so engagement is much higher.” This tallies with research from the Reuters Institute suggesting that 44% of readers prefer to be briefed a couple of times per day, indicating the preference for editions over constantly updated news. It also supports research done by Twipe, a Belgian company specialising in Digital Publishing and ePaper Analytics, which ran a research project from 2018 which examined successful new digital formats for publishers. Twipe’s research found that editions
correspond to fundamentally different reader behaviours and needs. Edition readers are typically busier people who want to take time once a day to go through a package of news. They appreciate editorial selection and finishability.

Not all e-replica editions are created equal or in fact, created for the same purpose. While some editions have replaced the entire print publication, like The Independent, some like L’édition du Soir (OuestFrance) target new, complementary audiences, and others like La Matinale (Le Monde) look to offer new, more interactive formats. All are inspired however, by the finite tangibility that the print reading experience can provide. As we move into an era in which we may see the most lasting digital reimaginations of the print form, there are key lessons to be learned from all the publishers we cover in this chapter.

Examples Pictures of the following exemplary e-papers/ digital-only editions can be arranged across the chapter

THE TELEGRAPH – Daily edition Based on a set of 30 carefully designed templates, The Telegraph partnered with Twipe to build a digital edition that goes far beyond a PDF replica. The templates strongly reflect the brand identity of The Telegraph and are enriched with elements that highlight the edition structure and composition including section fronts with teased articles, live sports results and book reviews.

Since the launch of this new edition product, The Telegraph has seen a 30% growth in daily active users. The collaboration between the two teams was a key factor in success.
To better understand how readers perceive the new app, including its layout and features, a survey was conducted among more than 400 readers.

Almost 90% of the readers found the overall experience to be better or the same as before. More than 30% of the readers found higher satisfaction in things such as the look and feel of the pages, ease of use, text readability, layout of images and content layout. One reader declared the new app to be a “newspaper re-born”, explaining that as a “news freak” this is the best app he’s tried.

To allow The Telegraph’s readers to easily navigate the 180 articles published on average every day, the team has co-designed the page cards navigation. Through a simple and sleek interface, readers can navigate the entire publication using card previews and sections.

DER SPIEGEL DAILY – the smart evening daily from renowned weekly Der Spiegel The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel launched Spiegel Daily in 2017 as a new digital paid-for daily newspaper. The idea behind the product was to “stop the world once a day” by offering readers a self-contained and engaging news experience, which complements the publishing house’s existing print and online offer.

Published daily at 17:00, Barbara Hans, editor-in-chief of Spiegel Online, told WAN-IFRA: “Spiegel Daily is a good addition to the website’s minute-to-minute offer and the weekly coverage of the news magazine because it offers something that neither Spiegel nor Spiegel Online can do in their current form – a self-contained daily news
experience.”

The content of Spiegel Daily is divided into six categories: News, Opinion, Stories, Social, Panorama and My Evening.

THE INDEPENDENT Daily Edition The London-based newspaper stopped printing its U.K. paper after three decades in 2016, cutting off traditional income but saving millions in costs with an online-only presence. The Independent, in fact, has been able to grow during the pandemic by licensing content and other digital services, while reducing other costs and keeping overall headcount low.

HANDELSBLATT10 – Handelsblatt focuses on the 10 most important news items The Handelsblatt 10 app delivers the top ten most important news stories daily. With concise and engaging content it provides an overview of news in Handelsblatt quality and helps its readers orient themselves lightning-fast in this vast world of information.

The fresh design in combination with a playful usability (e.g. speed read) serves one purpose – to present Handelsblatt 10 readers with an entertaining yet information-intense news experience.

DN.PRIO – Sweden’s fastest way to stay updated In 2015, the Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter broke new ground with an evening edition – but in a digital format called DN.prio. According to a release from parent publishing company Bonnier, the new DN.prio will be the fastest way for Swedes to stay updated on the news, with a chance to go
deeper if they have the time and interest, says Anna Åberg, head of the Dagens Nyheter (DN) website, DN.se. “Anyone who reads DN.prio should never feel as if they’ve missed something that everyone else is talking about,” she says.

Coming out morning, evening and during the weekends, DN.prio’s content is handpicked by DN’s editors and consists of the most important news and the day’s hottest topics of conversation.

MAIL+ The publisher of the Mail brands has relaunched its paid digital edition service Mail+ offering access to some print content not seen on Mail Online as well as podcasts, puzzles and more, Press Gazette reported earlier this year.

Mail+ was previously run as a separate operation to Mail Online but its new iteration is part of a more unified approach across the Mail brands since Ted Verity was made editor across all seven days of output in November 2021.

The new-look Mail+ includes two ways to read content from the print newspapers: a traditional page-turning digital edition and a new websitestyle format with more interactive features.

The subscription includes access to podcasts like those from Mail columnists Sarah Vine and Liz Jones – Femail Half-Hour and Liz Jones’s Diary – and video show Palace Confidential, which launched in January 2020 and proved to be one of the biggest hits from the previous iteration of Mail+. Subscribers also get access to some content from the next day’s print newspaper from 5pm the evening before, and a huge number of puzzles.

HS ILTA – detailed analyses and reporting every evening Heiisngen Sanomat also launched an evening digital edition in 2014 called HS Ilta. The edition provides the day’s most interesting news, analyses, topics, columns, photos and video in a neatly packaged, easily usable form. The first issue will be published on 28 August. HS introduces a totally new reading package for the early evening. HS Ilta is independent of the morning edition. Every weekday, it will feature news stories and articles produced by HS journalists and correspondents specifically for the evening edition. Analyses, photojournalism and moving images will also play an important part. HS Ilta is available on weekdays from 4:30 pm on Android and iPad tablets and the most recent smartphones.

FINANCIAL TIMES — FT Edit In March this year, The Financial Times launched FT Edit, a new digital-only edition that sticks to traditional newspaper format but provides a minimalist experience. Publishing 8 articles a day, FT Edit is aimed at converting people from its 26 million strong social media following to become subscribers, Twipe reported.

FT Edit is particularly easy and straightforward to use, offering a smooth edition format that presents an opportunity for more casual and light newsreaders to get engaged with the FT’s content.

The key value proposition of FT Edit is very clearly put across in its welcome note from Editor Roula Khalaf which makes it clear that the selection of articles is handpicked. The
condensed nature of the edition is also referenced, with readers being told they can “Read less and understand more.”

AFTENPOSTEN — morning brief Another example of a non e-paper bundling to reach ancillary audiences, the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten sought to define a product
experience by segmenting their audience into four cohorts:

1. News lover: Four or more visits per day, on average.
2. Daily briefer: One to three visits per day, on average.
3. Casual user: Less than one visit per day, on average.
4. Infrequent user: Less than four visits per month They decided that the smart thing to do was focus on casual users and daily briefers and ensure the first visit of the day to their site/app showed the very best journalism that explained the news of the day better than anyone else. So, they created the morning brief, a snackable front page that explains what has happened and why it matters, INMA reported. The feedback was immense – 80% of users indicated they wanted to see the briefing daily. And the product was particularly valuable to low-frequency users.

EDITION DU SOIR – evening infotainment from regional publisher Ouest France To target readers who are looking for something to read during their commute from work or while relaxing at home, Ouest-France created L’édition du Soir, published each weeknight at 6 PM. The edition is also optimised for the interests of readers during this time period, so there are more games and puzzles to help readers relax, in addition to reading the news.

LA MATINALE DU MONDE – the most important articles to read every morning As an early adopter of Snapchat Discover, Le Monde has been long ahead of the digital curve. A team is dedicated to creating stories just for Snapchat, which are generally ‘hard news’ stories adapted for a younger audience. Topics that are interesting for millennials but not covered as indepth in Le Monde are also published.

Le Monde also pioneered the story formatoff social media as well with the launch of LaMatinale, which uses an innovative Tinder-likeswiping feature to let readers build a reading listfrom the articles in the edition. We expect to seemore news product take on similar design thisyear, as the “story format” continues to grow inimportance.

What drives Digital-Only editions? In a recent research report on digital-only editions in European newspaper organisations, digital publishing solutions company TWIPE identified four drivers: a desire to innovate, creating editions for new times of day, meeting the needs of timecrunched readers. and changing business needs.

l The need to create new Product Offerings is one of the driving forces behind innovation in the news. Welt Edition, for instance, decided to create a digital-only edition when they heard that Apple would release a tablet. The organisation had no idea it would end up being the iconic iPad – they only knew that they wanted to be first on the German market with a newspaper tablet app.

l Digital-only editions can help publishers reach a new audience, without the risk of alienating their current audience. Ouest-France did just that when they observed a trend in their readers of wanting something more lighthearte to read in the evening. In response, they created a evening newspaper with an emphasis on games and interactive stories.

Through this, Ouest-France joined other savvy news organisations in knowing the importance of meeting its readers where they are and adapting the content to the time of day. On the other hand, Le Monde, a lunch-time newspaper, wanted to reach a younger audience with their digital offering, so they launched La Matinale, which also allowed them to become a player in the morning newspaper landscape.

l Often people simply are simply too busy to read the paper. Some news organisations therefore decided to produce editions that could be easily “finished”, even by those with little time to spar The Economist’s Espresso positioned itself as a ‘shot of daily news’ for busy people who only have a few minutes to be informed each morning. Resisting the
temptation to constantly update and publish news as it happens, The Welt Edition stopped with their multiple updates when saw that most readers were only opening the app once a day. Ever since, they have operated a single edition model “The edition is a success because it has a clear beginning and ending. If you’ve finished it then you know you know what is necessary, people are done at some time and then can go on and do other stuff. Grischa Rodust” – previously at Welt and Der Spiegel E-papers also have benefits for publishers, increasing readership and revenue

l Digital-only editions’ subscriptions, often cheaper than a full subscription, can help attract new subscribers unsure about the commitment of a full subscription. A digital-only offering can thus serve as a middle option between completely free digital news consumption and a hard paywall.

“We wanted to have something to offer in between the free consumption of the digital articles and becoming a full subscriber—an on-ramp for becoming a subscriber.” Remy Becher, Espresso

l The convenience of a digital-only edition, combined with the improved reader experience when the edition is specifically designed for digital consumption, creates a sense of added value that readers are more willing to pay for. DN+, for instance, decided to create a digital-only edition when their internal research showed readers would react negatively to a new subscription or paywall model.

l A digital edition, untroubled by expenses of printing and distribution, can be more economically viable. The Independent is an example of an organisation that decided to switch to digital-only when they realised producing their print edition was no longer financially feasible, pivoting from the longstanding print edition

BEST PRACTICES The TWIPE report on digital editions, concluding that there is a low level of maturity for the digitalonly edition market, and great opportunity for publishers to become early adopters of digital-only editions, identified some best practices:

1. FINISHABILITY
   Successful digital-only editions remember that finishability is key. While today readers have thousands of potential news sources, with the ability to be updated in real time, there is still a desire to be able to step away from the news. That is why the edition-based concept, having a clear beginning and end, strikes a chord with readers. They know
   that they can read these stories and be informed for the day. This is one reason why we have seen such great success for the digital-only editions that limit the number of stories they include. By ensuring that readers will be able to finish the edition in a timely manner, this makes it more likely that the reader will include the edition in their daily routine.

2. SIMPLICITY IN PRICING
   One of the common refrains in the interviews was that the digital-only editions were created to help with the constant onslaught of news that leaves readers feeling overwhelmed. To further lessen the overwhelming feeling that comes with news consumption today, many of the digital-only editions have adopted simplicity in their pricing strategy. This can be seen in the editions that benchmark their price, such as Espresso being the same priceas a daily cup of coffee or 12 aligning with Spotify’spricing. This can also be seen in the editions that have a single subscription offering, so that when readers decide to subscribe, they do not need to then decide what subscription plan works for them. Interestingly, the three editions that only have one subscription plan are the three ‘speed reads’: Handelsblatt10, Tamedia’s 12, and The Economist’s Espresso. This shows the importance of fully adapting editions to readers’ habits. Since these editions are meant for busy on-the-go people, the subscription plans have been streamlined as well so that potential subscribers do not need to spend any time comparing offers.

3. MEETING YOUR READERS WHERE THEY ARE For a digital-only edition to be successful, it needs to fit into the daily routine of its readers. Since each edition must be made to be finished, it is important to understand where and when the edition will be read and adapt it to that situation. By knowing who your readers are and what is important to them, it is also possible to deprioritize functions or features that readers do not need. For example, Handelsblatt10 knows that its target readers are on the move, so a desktop version of their edition is not necessary. This frees up resources to focus on giving the readers exactly what it is that they want.

4. PUSH NOTIFICATIONS In addition to social media – dedicated accounts posting stories from the edition on Facebook and Twitter – push notifications are an important tool for promotion. Letting readers know that the new edition is available via a push notification helps to prompt them to read. As many of the editions are meant for people on the go, relying on the readers remembering to check for the new edition would mean that some people who would want to read simply forget to check for the new edition. How exactly the push strategy is implemented differs for each publication. Some choose to have a notificationsimply stating there is a new edition ready tobe downloaded, while others highlight a leadingstory or even a few stories. The best push notificationstrategy will depend on the specific readers ofan edition and what they are wanting to get out of
   reading. That is one reason why a desire to innovate is so key for successful digital-only editions, testing in all aspects will provide a deep understanding othe readers and what they want.

5. STRONG CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS Cross-functional teams are pivotal to both the creation and success of the editions. By having team members from different areas of the business, with diverse backgrounds and skill sets, new ideas emerge from the team. This helps with creating a truly innovative product. Additionally, crossfunctional teams allow for quicker decision making. Since such teams allow the digital-only edition to be independent, they do not need to rely on the skills or decisions of others outside the team. Having a quicker decision-making process allows for more innovation to continuously improve the digital-only edition.

MAKING USE OF DATA One area for improvement for many digital-only editions, and for the larger publishing industry as a whole, is the integration of data in the decisionmaking process. Publishers insist stories and placement are chosen by gut feeling rather than what the data demonstrates as trending –- and if it does show that it is a popular topic, then it is merely a bonus. However, data, when presented, is either divorced from context or overwhelming and poorly presented.

‘We believe in a clear separation between church and state. We will never clickbait or change our headlines so more people will read it. We do keep a close eye on what stories people engage with most, but it isn’t that we then use that data to change the edition’s content’, — Remy Becher, Espresso.

Data integration is crucial to a good e-paper. Tamedia’s 12-app stands out for how data integrated it is, with in-house technology to pick stories, which they call the Octopus.

The Octopus trawls the database and picks out the best articles for each day’s edition. More newsrooms are comfortable with data and technology being used to understand reader behaviour, as opposed to being used in the creation process itself. One example is at the Espresso, where they learned how important the speed of the edition loading is. Their data shows a clear correlation between the speed of the edition loading and commercial success of the app itself.

Most editions have some level of automation, but to differing degrees. Often the creation of the edition itself is highly automated, for example once a story is written The Economist’s Espresso, the picture desk is tasked with selecting the appropriate images, and then the images are automatically added to the article. However the decision of which stories to include is not automated for most publishers.

Some areas to focus on when
planning digital edition strategy

1. INCLUDING SEVERAL FEATURES IN AN EPAPER
   Digital edition apps or web versions as not just another channel to distribute the print newspaper. Several additional features can enrich a viewer’s consumption experience. An example is McClatchy in the US, which has an “Extra” section in their digital editions to include content that didn’t make it to print. Digital editions are a great way to accommodate last-minute news like sports scores or election results.
   Publishers also benefit from leveraging the digital nature of their ePapers to include features like puzzles and games. Ouest-France’s L’Edition du Soir has seen a significant portion of its page views come from their puzzle and game section.

2. INCORPORATING AUDIO
   The use of audio is a very effective retention tool, and digital editions would be wise to make use of it well. Publishers on Twipe’s edition platform have started to make use of voice over for individual articles, which can provide a different news experience while also improving accessibility for a variety of subscribers.
   For The Economist, their “audio edition” product has been an important engagement tool since 2007. They have further invested in their audio edition during the pandemic, due to the strong, positive impact it has on retention.

3. GOING BEYOND PDFS
   While the print replica of your newspaper, commonly called an ePaper, is an important product, it is not the only edition product. The Telegraph, for instance, has focused solely on a digital-first look and feel for their daily edition product based on a set of 30 carefully designed templates. This means there is no more PDF involved. Since the launch of this new edition product, The Telegraph has seen a 30% growth in daily active users.

4. WORKING TOWARDS A DISCOVERABILITY STRATEGY OR THE DIGITAL EDITION
   Most publishers have their digital edition entirely behind a paywall, often not even showing any type of content if the user is not subscribed and logged in, making it difficult to convert new readers into edition readers as there is a total lack of sampling.
   Metered social sharing could help –when an article from the ePaper is shared on social, non-subscribers can still swipe left or right to additional articles in the edition before hitting the paywall. Locating the ePaper on a publisher’s website is often a challenge, too small and easily missable. Highlighting the ePaper with an updated thumbnail of each day’s edition could make for a smoother reading experience.

5. INVESTING IN A COMPLETE PRODUCT EXPERIENCE
   Research shows that edition readers are more loyal, less likely to seek out free news, and engage with news content for longer reading sessions. For an improved product experience, certain areas could be focused on.
   All ePapers must have PDF quality for pinch to zoom reading. While most ePapers have “article lightboxes“, where readers can click on an article to open it up full screen, the majority of reading is still done in pinch to zoom mode. With only 25% of readers clicking on the article lightboxes, a majority of readers suffer poor user experience.
   Another area to focus on is speed, especially to attract a younger audience that is accustomed to lighting fast digital experiences. For example, The Telegraph’s optimisation of their homepage speed (going from 9 seconds to load to 5.5 seconds), resulted in a 49% increase in subscription conversion and a 12% increase in pageviews from subscribers.

6. KEEP IN MIND THE HABIT FORMATION POWER OF EDITIONS
   Habit formation strategies have been an important topic for many publishers this year, especially as the pandemic meant news audiences experienced unprecedented changes to their daily routines, which offered a rare opportunity to quickly create new habits. With this heavy focus on habit formation, it’s important to prioritise the product that generations of people already have a habit with: the newspaper edition, whether that be in print or digital. With more publishers needing to reduce print days, it will be key to be able to offer readers a familiar experience in digital

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The Innovation in News Media World Report is published every year by INNOVATION Media Consulting in association with WAN-IFRA, The report is co-edited by INNOVATION President, Juan Señor, and Senior Consultant Jayant Sriram