Bringing online innovation to the local level

DerWesten.de

Katherina Borchert, Head of WAZ New Media, and the Editor-in-Chief of derwesten.de (WAZ Mediagroup) was also the speaking guest during today’s INMA/OPA Outlook 2010 conference in Liverpool. She shared her experience with bringing innovation to the very local level. DerWesten.de had introduced three main changes to its newsroom and workflow:

1. Webvideo. It was first produced in the newsroom but didn’t work well neither in terms of revenue or online traffic. Then small cameras were distributed among journalists in all  the offices. They are small and easy for every journalist to put in a bag or a pocket. This way, DerWesten.de receives exclusive content – not always of best quality, but definitely very local and very deep.

DerWesten.de also does live streaming. Thanks to a cheap local service they have a possibility to upload the video directly to the web. They use nokia mobile phones for reporters to cover different big events, such as demonstrations for instance. Der Westen is the leader with such innovation in their region, and those changes greatly increased their reach.

2. Hyperdistribution: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, and other social networks. The motto that made DerWesten.de distribute its content in social networks was something that many social networks think: “If the news is that important, it will find me”. Such actions greatly increased the traffic on the site, Twitter and Facebook gave extra 8% of the traffic, what actually means 8% of free traffic.

3. MediaLab. In comparison to former two, this one is not as cost efficient. Medialab is an online to print publishing platform with mostly citizen journalists contributing to it. Medialab is printed twice a week, at a very local level. It already has advertisements in it.

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