A hArd-hitting - Plantin

Heidelberg News • opportunities
PRoF. DR.
THoRSTEN LoRENz
is head of the media education
course and the audiovisual
media center at the
Pädagogische Hochschule
in Heidelberg. since 2002,
he has also been one of the
judges for the rolf-Hans-
Müller award for film music,
television plays and television
series. from 1985
to 1996, he was a television
director, scriptwriter and
producer.
42 • Issue 268 • 2009
KARSTA HoLCH
is the Principal of the Helmholtz
High school, the largest
school in Heidelberg. an
active member of the teaching
profession since 1972,
she goes beyond the normal
range of subjects at her
school to include a comprehensive
cultural offering designed
to enable students to
play an active part in society.
MARTIN VERG
began his career at Hamburgbased
publisher Gruner &
Jahr as an intern. He has
been editor-in-Chief of the
children’s magazine Geolino
since 2008. With its exciting
and sophisticated mix of
reports on history, research,
and culture, Geolino is today
the best-selling children’s
magazine in Germany.
the last newspaper will be printed in 2043. That, at
any rate, is the claim Philip Meyer makes in his book
“The Vanishing Newspaper.” Are traditional print
media facing extinction?
Thorsten Lorenz: I don’t think so. The fact is
that more and more daily papers are disappearing
from the market or are now only produced online. At the same
time, various studies show that today’s 12 to 19 year olds spend
increasingly more time on the Internet and are buying up to 20%
fewer newspapers and magazines than 10 years ago. But it would
be premature to speak of the demise of print media, as the number
of new publications for children and teenagers is on the rise. Furthermore,
the range of children’s magazines is growing slightly in both
Germany and elsewhere. Children and teenagers love reading, particularly
books and magazines that are produced specifically for
them. This is why, in my view, the current printing crisis is not so
much a crisis of a medium that has supposedly become old-fashioned
but the result of a business model that doesn’t work.
What do you mean by that?
Thorsten Lorenz: All newspaper publishers provide highquality
information on the Internet free of charge. Why should
someone pay money for printed paper when almost exactly the same
information is available for free online? And this situation is largely
financed with the advertising revenues from the print editions. The
result is a kind of “information stock market crash” in the printing
industry, as information today is both important and worthless.
Franco Rota: But this only partly explains the current crisis.
The Internet is attacking the traditional daily newspaper at its very
core – its topicality. The daily paper is today no longer the medium
of choice when people want information fast. Why should I wait
for tomorrow’s edition when I can get information about current
events online at any time? Increasing numbers of adults are also
latching onto young people’s media usage patterns and have come
to appreciate the many benefits of the Internet. Daily papers are
therefore not just losing support among young readers but right
across all age groups.
What form might future models for success take?
Adriana Nuneva: The new media is changing people’s
preferences and habits in the way they consume media. That is
why it is becoming increasingly important for magazine and newspaper
publishers looking to avert further losses to focus on their
target groups and adapt their offering accordingly. I agree with the
analysis of Thorsten and Franco but I think the printing crisis is
also a crisis of content, because the traditional daily paper lacks
appeal for the younger target groups.
Thorsten Lorenz: Absolutely. When you look at the traditional
sections of a daily newspaper, i.e. politics, business, and culture,
those are the sections that young people have absolutely no interest
in and account for a large part of the front page.