The news industry is facing big challenges.

Like in the past.

Like today.

Like tomorrow.

So let’s remember:

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO what a ride”

(Thanks to INNOVATION’s Claude Erbsen)

The blog of the World Editors Forum writes about “i”, the newspaper that INNOVATION did with Sojormedia in Portugal.

As Emma Heald writes: Portugal’s newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design.

See here a recent cover story with a unique front and inside pages that were produced on deadline:

I had been this week in Madrid to speak in an international seminar organized by El Mundo during its 20 Anniversary celebration.

Among other speakers were Robert Thompson (Wall Street Journal), Will Lewis (The Daily Telegraph), Pedro J. Ramirez (El Mundo), Ben Macintyre (The Times), Giorgio Valerio (RCS), Antonio Fernandez Galiano (Unedisa) and Martim Figueiredo (i-Sojornal).

This was my interview published in El Mundo this Wednesday

(In the above picture, the King of Spain and Will Lewis during the El Mundo Awards ceremony where The Daily Telegraph was honored for its coverage of the MP’s expenses scandal)

A perfect front page for an eight page cover story.

Pure “daily-news-magazine.”

Miguel Torres talks to The Guardian and says that his firm re-invests 95% of its profits in the business.

Yes, 95%.

In vino, veritas!

So they are growing, selling more bottles than ever, expanding their markets and making more money than ever.

What a lesson for the Bancroft kind of media publishers of this world!

Time of crisis?

Time to invest!

So, less bonus, less memos, and more demos and prototypes.

Candid Japanese visual animations from the late 19th and early 20th century by T. Enami (1859-1929).

He was known as “King of the Stereoview, Master of the Lantern-Slide And Prolific Anonymous Contributor To the World of Yokohama Album Views.”

Watch here some of these fantastic 3D stereoviews depicting life in Meiji-period Japan.

And this was his fabulous business card

WE ARE DIFFERENT is a French quarterly magazine abour urban fashion and culture with fantastic covers quite:

Provocative.

Interesting.

Innovative.

And, yes, WAD is DIFFERENT.

(Via Nas Capas)

“Yesterday’s answer has nothing to do with today’s problems”

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft company.

“Here’s my one word secret to success: Anticipation”

Donald Reagan, the 66th United States Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief of Staff in the Ronald Reagan Administration.

This 37 year old Portuguese journalist is the publisher and editor of i, the new quality national compact and compelling daily newspaper published by Sojormedia that was launched in May 2009.

Martim was the former editor of Diario Economico and later became the Communications Director of SONAE.

I had the opportunity top work with Martim and his team in the planning and implementation of a simple idea: let’s produce a new and relevant on and off line daily newspaper for the new generations of professionals in Portugal, hiring young journalists and giving them a “no limits” freedom to report, edit and present exclusive news and tell stories that move people.

In less than six months, i has become the most innovative newspaper of Europe, and the best designed newspaper of Spain and Portugal.

And Martim is now one of the main speakers in any big newspaper congress.

His case, a new quality newspaper when many old ones are not sure about the future of this industry, is a great example of courage, entrepreneurship and vision.

So Martim is, for sure, a Media Innovator!

(I took the above picture during my last visit to Lisbon before the launch of i: from the left to the right, Martim with his Commercial Director, Joao Pedro Mendes, and the President of Sojormedia, Francisco Rebelo dos Santos)

These are fake prototypes of the Apple tablet or, better, slate.

It will better, lighter and more appealing, I can assure you.

But not a rubber screen, as it will be soon or later.

A rubber paper.

We are like the Romans with the Acta Diurna, carving the news in stone surfaces.

Let’s migrate to the rubber paper.

56 concept designs and fake prototypes here.

You can be the owner of a great newspaper like The New York Times, but this doesn’t mean that you have the talent and character to lead a newspaper that it’s an institution.

A newspaper institution that, at the end of the day, “belongs” to thousands of loyal readers.

So here there are more stupid comments from the capo di tutti capi.

The New York magazine had a brief cocktail encounter with “Pinch” Sulzberger and he made these lousy comments comparing print newspapers to the Titanic!

He thinks that physical newspapers will stick around as well. “The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy?” he asked. We hadn’t. “What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?” We tried to answer: Poor construction? Not enough life boats? Crashing into stuff? “A captain trying to set a world speed record through an iceberg field?” he said, shaking his head. “Even if the Titanic came in safely to New York Harbor, it was still doomed,” he said. “Twelve years earlier, two brothers invented the airplane.”

…

“We are trying to convert shipping companies to airplane companies,” said Sulzberger. “Same business: transporting people safely across long distances. Different cost structure, different way of doing business, but the same core business. There is still a very vibrant business in shipping. It’s just not taking masses of people across the Atlantic. It’s now taking families around the Seychelles, or something like that. There will still be passenger ships, but they’re not going to be in the same business. So print will still be here, I believe, decades from now. But will it be the driving force? No.”

As one reader of the pice said:

Airplanes did not surpass ships as the primary means of crossing the Atlantic until 1958. The TITANIC was not trying to set a speed record (it would have been physically impossible). Her construction was hardly shoddy. Airplanes in 1912 were little more than flimsy toys. The Atlantic was not crossed by commercial airplanes until the late 30s and then in hops. Lousy analogy!

Yes, a lousy analogy from a lousy publisher.

So with this kind of “friends”, the newsroom of The New York Times doesn’t need any enemy.

The enemy is inside.

It’s the owner!

(Picture by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Our enemy is not Google.

Our enemy is Corporate News.

Commodity News.

Low Fat Journalism.

Decaffeinated News.

MacPapers.

MacWebs.

MacBlogs.

MacJournalism.

A revealing graphic that show how The Wall Street Journal wins, and the New York Post loses.

(Via thewal)

His founder, Gumersindo Lafuente, was the former editor of elmundo.es

Today he announced that soitu.es, one of the most innovative online-only publications in Spain, 22 month after its launch, is out.

Why?

Lost a lot of money and was, I’m sorry, irrelevant.

That’s all.

UPDATE:

In Rue89 AFP’s Eric Scherer says that there three lessons to be learned from the death of soitu.es

1. Don’t depend only from one shareholder (specially if it is a bank)

2. Start small.

3. Don’t depend only from advertising.

Well soitu.es made all these three mistakes.

Let me explain you who is the guy in this picture.

He is the famous “Joao Buracao.” (Jack Pothole)

A very unique street reporter.

A few weeks ago we had a ONE DAY WITH INNOVATION in Rio, and one of the participants was the editor of EXTRA, the popular best-selling newspaper of Brazil.

After the ONE DAY we visited his office and we found there, seating in his own chair, “Joao Buracao”

He is now a Brazilian press institution: “Joao Buracao” is watchdog real human size reporter used by the paper to denounce the bad shape of many street roads in the city.

He has his own blog.

And he is a key-player for the Rio 2016 Games.

When he is not meeting the Mayor of Rio, “Joao” goes to the schools, is invited to weddings, gets condecorations, and went to the hospital when the local police used extreme force with him…

And of course “Joao” has a very busy schedule standing in front of the most dramatic holes of the city.

This is the way that he was discovered by Fernando Torres, a real reporter of EXTRA.

In this video you can see the “father” of “Joao Burcao” explaining why he created him.

Now he has “Tiao”, a son that helps him in this job.

Here they are seating with Irandi Pereira da Rocha, the father of the Buracao family.

And because this is Rio, other “Joaos” are following the same path.

He is now a “celebrity”, so big that some local politicians fear that if “Joao Burcao” becomes a “candidate” he can win the elections.

His record since he was “hired” by EXTRA: more than 200 denounced “buracos” (potholes) have been fixed in Rio.

Our friends of O POVO in Fortaleza had today this fantastic front page about the same problem with the main road in this state.

Well they need to invite “Joao Buracao” or create their own one.

(Pictures by EXTRA)

A brilliant book review about the re-make of this popular book.

John Crace ends his unique comment in The Guardian G2 with these eloquent words:

More is less.

You can read here or listen here the podcast version of John Crace’s Guardian column, lampooning the literary style of leading authors by summarising their books in five minutes.

This is Book Review Caviar!

I meet Chris many years ago when he was the innovative editor of The Orange County Register in California.

He is the one that dispatched reporters to the malls and created the first “Shopping Mall Reporter” press cards!

His editorial and newsroom management changes made The Register one of the most innovative U.S. papers in the 1980’s.

One day, we were in Bergen (Norway), both speaking at the Scandinavian Society of News Design (SND/S) and he told me a big lesson that I will never forget:

“You can make great changes in any newsroom, but as editor you must explain the changes one to one, devoting as much time is needed. If sometimes I was not able to implement changes, always was because I didn’t follow this rule ad I didn’t talk one by one.”

Chris Anderson became very soon a successful newspaper executive and was the publisher and CEO of The Register.

The Register earned two Pulitzer prizes under Anderson’s leadership and he was named Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation in 1989.

Today, The Oregonian announced that Chris is going to be his new publisher.

Chris is now 59, but I am sure that he is not intimidated by the big challenges of the newspaper market.

If I were a journalist at The Oregonian, today I will be very, very happy.

He was, he is, and will be a Media Innovator!

(In the picture, Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson, is sprayed with champagne by photographer Brian Smith, and other celebrants in the Register’s newsroom after word arrived about the Pulitzer win.)