Thanks!

Still is a work in progress but last Friday, the editors and reporters of Cadena Capriles left the old building in downtown Caracas and landed in a new state-of-the-art multimedia integrated newsroom in La Urbina.

These are the first pictures of one of the most modern a futuristic newsroom in Latin America.

This is a dream that started one night in Goteborg, Sweden, having dinner during the 2008 World Newspaper Congress with the CEO of Cadena Capriles, Miguel Angel Capriles, and editorial director of the group, Nathalie Alvaray, now its media vice president.

This dream is now a reality thanks to the work and help of many people, specially the local engineer Gustavo Torres and our INNOVATION Media Architect Consultants, Luis Calau and Vicente Riera.

This is the new building.

The new facility will be fully operational in May but as you can see right now people are enjoying the space and work, including a new cafeteria.

Cadena Capriles is the publisher of three leading newspapers: ULTIMAS NOTICIAS (general news quality popular), LIDER (sports) and EL MUNDO (business), plus several magazines and online news operations.

All these journalists (more than 330 with 220 desks) work now together in a fantastic open-space 1.000 square meters newsroom under the umbrella of a Multimedia Superdesk.

During these past four years INNOVATION has produced several multimedia integration editorial, commercial and newsroom management models and manuals, designed the integrated multimedia newsroom and done extensive in-house training.

More information, pictures and videos in the next few days.

(Pictures from Karina Lizcano, Danisbel Gómez, Nathalie Alvaray, Alberto Yajure, Hilda Carmona, Edixon Games, Yelitza Linares and José Sueiro)

Our new INNOVATIONS IN MAGAZINE MEDIA World Report is out.

We presented the FIPP publication last Monday in Berlin.

Yo can buy print or digital copies here.

Not a very good design.

Not a very good photo editor.

Not a very good future.

L’Equipe is now the French national newspaper losing more circulation.

The proof is the pudding.

Financial Times reports:

Many of you now my mantra since the 1970′s:

The media display of the future will be the “rubber paper”

In this amazing video, “A Day Made of Glass”, Corning presents a not so futuristic way of life because “touch screens” are here right now.

But the future will a more flexible and safe material or perhaps the “rubber glass”

Watch here how this surfaces will evolve making possible INNOVATION’s “newsslate”.

In the picture, the Museum of Glass

(Thanks to INNOVATION’s Pedro Monteiro)

Alfonso Nieto died yesterday in Pamplona (Spain) but his legacy as a person, friend,  writer, thinker, mentor and leader will last for many years.

He was the absolute force behind the development of Journalism education in Spanish universities.

During his time as president of the University of Navarre we founded INNOVATION.

We learned from him many lessons and one of them was that “nothing is more practical than a good theory.”

Alfonso Nieto was a close friend of the late Leo Bogart, a founding director of INNOVATION.

Like Leo, he was a man of good manners, many friends, sharp mind and highly educated.

Both loved books and libraries.

And both loved newspapers.

But both were very critical about poor media business management.

Without credibility, values and compelling service to readers, advertisers, audiences and communities, press and media were “cathedrals without soul”.

Alfonso Nieto was  a pioneer in news media management education.

He saw very early, in the 1980′s, the big role and future of free newspapers and wrote a seminal book on this matter.

When I went to New York’s Columbia Journalism School as a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in 1978, his frequent letters to me during that year were always inspirational, challenging and really friendly.

A few months ago I got in the UK his last one, saying that he missed the Hay-on-Wye bookshelves!

They too, and all of us.

Don Alfonso, we will miss you very much.

From our man in Palo Alto:

 ”Everyone knows mobile is not just the future, it’s today”

Read here his excellent analysis about Facebook’s IPO: ” Facebook has become financial giant, but not an invincible one”

The first ever “Guardian Open Weekend” is a fantastic idea.

When many newspapers are in the “brick to click” mood, The Guardian Open Weekend extravagance is a very much needed “click to brick” marketing strategy.

INNOVATION‘s Javier Ramirez is a well known expert in this field and has been telling our clients around the world about the importance of this kind of initiatives, specially now that “virtual and digital relationships” are so “politically correct” in the media business.

The Guardian editor’s Alan Rusbridger writes today:

“… we are opening our doors -hosting a weekend at the end of March for a festival of idras, innovation and entertainment… We are looking to welcome thousands of readers to take part in the weekend of 24-25 March for an extraordinary mix of debates, talks, workshops, music, comedy, poetry, food and fun…A newspaper in 2011 is more than words printed on paper…The Guardian has no proprietor. Owned by the Scott Trust since 1936, it has been absolutely independent for more than 190 years, its main relationship always with its readers… The journey the Guardian is on is an open one…”

My talk: welcome to real people experiences, personal relationships marketing, real readers in real places. That’s the great advantage of any newspaper or media company with “soul” and loyal readers and advertisers. A new trend that has fantastic cases like the ones lead by The Times of India or the Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

The Mail Online reports:

“The Advertising Standards Authority is banning the advert, ruling that the image of Miss Weisz, pictured, ‘misleadingly exaggerated’ the performance of the product. Last year L’Oreal adverts featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington were also banned for being misleading.”

My take: airbrushing reality is rocketing not just in advertising but in photojournalism. So readers and consumers become more and more skeptical about ads and news pictures because we trade reality for aesthetics: when only beauty matters, truth and credibility die.

Tom Curley, retiring Associated Press CEO in a recent interview:

“The market for news traditionally defined is growing, it’s stronger than ever, there are more people engaged with news more times a day and in more countries than ever before. The overall market is strong. The challenge is the revenue side and how to raise revenues. There’s obviously a shifting taking place. Some of that shift has involved sending money from traditional media to web players so we all have to figure out what relevance means for the news world.”

My take: news-wire services like Associated Press are excellent platforms to learn how to integrate multimedia newsrooms, and some of the best places to produce high quality news and analytic reliable content.

Great news:

Helen Gurley Brown, who edited Cosmopolitan for 31 years, gave $30 million on behalf of her late husband David, a movie and musical producer who attended Columbia and Stanford universities.

Helen Gurley Brown, will be 90 in February, and was editor of Cosmopolitan from 1965 to 1996,  a magazine with 64 editions, in 35 languages and more than 80 countries.

David Brown, along with Richard Zanuck and Steven Spielberg produced such classic American films as “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Verdict” and “Jaws”

My take: The “David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation” is a fantastic idea. Stanford will bring the technology and Columbia the media tradition. In the past, a media school will have joint a business school in this kind of programs, but now, more and more, technology is the new media business model.

(David and Helen Gurley Brown in 1984. Photo/Hearst.)

The death of LA TRIBUNE in Paris shows that full color, size or design will not solve the problems of newspapers.

LA TRIBUNE is firing two thirds of a very small newsroom with 77 journalists, and now wants to become a printed weekly plus a daily news website, all done with less than 30 journalists.

Good luck!

More and more, bad newspapers with bad managers, no advertising and a few readers, are becoming “digital papers”… when, in reality, they were dead on print like they will be dead online.

Newspaper need more than cosmetic solutions.

You cannot change a paper just adding more color, more graphics or playing with the format.

Newspapers need more and better Journalism, more and better journalists, and more and better managers, on print and on line.

Nor less.

If not, any solution is just putting lipstick-on-a-pig.

That’s all folks!

INNOVATION is right now working with our Media Architects of Calau&Riera in Barcelona and our international network of Newsroom Management Consultants in almost a dozen of new integrated multimedia newsrooms, in United States, Latin America, Europe, and Middle East.

Watch here a short video clip with the key-elements of these “information-engine” and “digital first” multimedia newsrooms.

(In the picture, the Russian Ria Novosti super desk in Moscu)

Many newspapers look today like a daily morgue.

A compilation of dead news bodies.

Well presented, but dead.

And our newsrooms spend time and time just to collect, embellish and organise the daily morgue.

Yes, we do some forensic journalism too, but it’s too little, to late.

Instant analysis is done more and more by websites, blogs and wire services.

So, what’s the role of a daily newspaper?

Not to be a news morgue.

Not to be forensic media

But “Prognosis Media.”

Diagnostics are not needed in newspapers after dead news are in front of us.

Again, it’s to late.

What our readers need and want in print or in tablets is “Slow Cooking Journalism.”

Not just telling us what we already know, but “Forward Journalism.”

Print and tablet news journalists are needed to advise and prevent.

Welcome to the “Strategic Journalism” preached in the 1980′s by pioneers like Claude Monnier.

Welcome to INNOVATION’s “Caviar Journalism.”

Bloomberg Pursuits wants to be the “first global luxury magazine”

It will be a complimentary magazine targeting the 310.000 subscribers of the $20,000 a year Bloomberg Terminals.

The average household income of Bloomberg Pursuits readers is $452,000, and 90 percent are male.

The debut issue contains 46 editorial pages and 30 advertising pages.

The new magazine will start next month as a quarterly.

My take: small pagination for a wealthy magazine in a crowded market. A new brand for the Bloomberg magazine portfolio where only Businessweek rocks. Free for rich? No way.

(Pictures: an early prototype of the magazine’s cover and two real double-spread of the first issue)

A few pictures from Rory Cellan-Jones about the construction of the new BBC headquarters in the old Regent Street headquarters.

This will be one the world’s  largest multimedia newsroom (up to 6,000 people in total and up to 320 journalists in the newsroom).

I saw the plans last year during our meetings with the BBC journalism editors, and the real thing looks better.

This mega-newsroom will be fully operational in 2013.

The dramatic BBC newsroom will be visible both from the street and through a large glass window in a BBC Media Cafe open to the public.

In this picture you can see the INNOVATION “solar system” idea under construction

And here you can have a full view of the central desk

Read here more about the current work in Broadcasting House.

An interesting and revealing interview with the young and visionary CEO of Johnston Press:

“The fundamental aspect of the business is that every newspaper in the group has a healthy margin over 20 per cent and all up the business is very profitable. The challenge is, can you migrate that business into the digital realm quickly enough before profits decline.”

My take: Many leading newspaper companies are still very profitable, and investing in the digital future, because there is no other one and no other one strategy: investing the money of the past in the business of the future.

Nathan Myhrvold, former chief strategist and chief technology officer at Microsoft, founder of Intellectual Ventures, writes in Bloomberg View:

“Could newspaper journalism likewise entice readers to pay for online news? People like quality journalism, so I believe that, ultimately, they can be persuaded to pay for it. But as with cable, the price will have to start low; it can then inch upward as the public gradually accepts the new business model.

The question is whether paid-subscription news sites can make the transition fast enough to make up for their plummeting ad revenue. It takes time to persuade people to pay for something they expect to get free. Ultimately, the change will happen, but maybe not fast enough to save some of the great institutions of newspaper journalism.”

My take: Yes, many great institutions of newspaper journalism will not make it, but Journalism will survive. So, great is good, but fast is better.

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