Obama’s victory too late for printed editions of European newspapers

Europeans could learn this morning results of the US elections from any medium — except printed editions of their newspapers. Have been the online editions any better?

Results of exit polls from the first swinging states were known in Europe late at night on November 4-5 — at about 2 AM in London (GMT) or at 3 AM in Paris, Berlin and Warsaw (CET).

Obama’s victory was decided even later — at about 4 AM (GMT) or 5 AM (CET).

So it was a nightmare for newspaper editors.

In most of their printed editions they could do no more than play with readers and try to invite them to their online editions, as editors of a Belgian daily newspaper De Morgen did:

What did readers see online, when they logged in this morning?

(Want to see more front pages of printed editions of European newspapers? Go to gallery at Newseum.)

Some European newspapers invested in their websites to change its layout and offer interactive features they could not have provided in print.

Here’s a great example of the UK Guardian’s home page:

Changing a structure of this home page must have been much more expensive and time-consuming than changing a layout of a front page in print. They needed to involve not only editors and designers, but their technology staff.

Here is a collection of home pages of some other nationwide European newspapers, as retrieved at 9 AM (GMT) or 10 (AM CET) on November 5th:

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