Perhaps one of the best newspaper apps in the world, when it comes to imaginative utilization of pop-ups, is that of Germany’s Bild, a popular newspaper read by millions.
Bild in print is a combination of big, bold, irreverent and loud. It is a newspaper with a distinct DNA that its editors enhance and protect with each daily edition. When Bild decided to create a tablet edition, it allocated the human resources to do it just right. And the content of Bild—a mixture of hard news, celebrity and sports features, and the “out of this world” stories and photos—is a happy combination that lends itself to the tablet. I have visited with the Bild team and have always admired their zest and how they know what their newspaper is all about and proceed to let its personality come through.
Here is how Michael Paustian, deputy editor-in-chief of Bild, explains the tablet strategy for his newspaper:
Bild has a unique way of storytelling with its large photos, a special kind of design (you might call it a ‘crazy’ design), emotional headlines, exclusive stories and entertainment. And of course, due to our large broadsheet format, a certain ‘punch.’ Our goal was to create something with the same impact on a much smaller device. In the end, the result was something you could call an ‘enhanced newspaper.’ We try to bring together the best of three worlds:
First, the beauty of the good old newspaper. Still no surface gives you a better opportunity to classify which topic is important and which is less important. At first glance, it gives you serendipity. In addition, we provide a relaxed, lean-back experience, which works for the iPad as well. Another benefit from our point of view is that a newspaper is a product that ‘dies away.’ You have to buy a new one every day.
Second, the iPad offers you all the possibilities of the digital world: video, sound and animations, to name a few. Of course, it also provides the user with up-to-date news. At the end, our readers find all of the content originally created for Bild.de. I equate it to ‘a real-time layer’ for the newspaper. For example, we now provide an average of twenty-six videos to our customers inside the app every day.
Third, everything the iPad can do. It features a unique feature set, combining the power of motion sensors with the beauty of touching and discovering something with your fingertips. Then there is the camera. We start with quite common and obvious things like 360-degree photos and films and end with a built in physics engine. Right now we are trying out eye-tracking software, which gives you a 3-D view to view special photos without goggles. We are also experimenting with some augmented reality studies for how to connect print and the iPad as well.
It’s a very playful approach. But all our market research shows that it really works. Our users are addicted to these neat little surprises. Even more importantly, we think all these tools give us so many new possibilities to create better ways of storytelling. We are convinced this will even improve journalism in general, producing new customers. It is the only way to compete with games and other apps on your iPad.
The effort to produce such a product in a daily workflow is high. We cannot use templates because our inspiration, the printed Bild, does not use any templates to begin with. We have to create all of our editions from scratch. It is a parallel mode of working, along with the print newspaper and with online.
We have eight people who are dedicated iPad producers to translate the print version and to add and to enhance content appropriate for that platform. We think it is well worth the effort. We also decided to build our own production tool, which gives us the power to create elaborate stories. We can add physicality, animation and more to all our content. The process works seamlessly with our content management system and gives us the freedom to develop something new by ourselves.
As you learned in this chapter, stories can gain longer legs and go beyond words when given that extra push for tablet publication. Using what you have learned: