This May twenty five reporters of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s best read quality daily, got back to their schools — primary and secondary, public and private all over the country — to check how did they embrace new technologies.
Reporters had to spend there a week going to classes, doing homeworks, talking to pupils, teachers and parents. Some of them finished their education there 30 years ago. Imagine the challenge!
Readers could follow reporters’ expedition on their blog, give them tips, share experiences.
Sadly, they found that Polish schools are “museums of chalk”, as one of teachers wrote in a letter to editors.
Grzegorz Lorek, a biology teacher from a city of Leszno, claimed: “Schools pretend the Internet does not exist. Some teachers don’t have even e-mail addresses. I am also a ‘digital immigrant’ as I grew up in the world before the Internet revolution. And my pupils are ‘digital natives’. They live in a sort of an avatar. When they go to school, they get out of their avatar for a while and what do they find? Me — a teacher at the chalk board. I work in the museum of “the chalk reality”. How can I teach them to live in the new brave world?”
We believed Mr. Lorek’s testimony was so important that we quoted his letter on the front page of Gazeta when we started our week-long series called “School 2.0″. The headline read: “The end of the chalk age”.
From May 17 to 22 we published 25 articles about it in the nation-wide edition and 205 articles in 21 local editions of Gazeta. All stories, photos and videos were posted in a new section on the newspaper site.

Findings of Gazeta’s reporters embedded into schools

Over 91 per cent of pupils in Poland have a computer at home and most of them have an Internet access. But some teachers still ask kids to write — for example — a definition of a metaphor as their homework and then surprisingly get the same answer copied from Wikipedia!
Gazeta’s journalists surveyed 2,081 pupils and learned that 71 per cent used the Internet when doing their homeworks. 45 per cent admitted their homeworks are fully based on information found online!
Nobody has taught them how to use this information critically, how to evaluate and compare sources. Where were the teachers?
When reporters talked to them, they so often seemed to be helpless or overwhelmed by the speed and variety of changes in the society.
One history teacher complained: “I ask pupils what’s the source of knowledge today and the answer they give is: ‘You log in to Wikipedia and copy”. I ask who’s been at a library recently? I hear: ‘Me, I logged in to www.library.pl’.”
But is it any wrong?
Another teacher — the Polish literature specialist — cried: “Six-graders don’t remember an alphabet as they use computer dictionary tools to write. They speak abbreviations, their sentences get poorer and poorer. The language of text-messaging has entered the everyday conversation.”
She and the others didn’t know how to include new technologies and Internet tools into their practice. They didn’t know any good examples of good practices. They didn’t know if there were any teaching materials available, where to find them and how to use them.
During our research the social impact of new technologies seemed often to be out of radar of school authorities with one exception. Schools reacted quickly when noticed about pathologies like privacy breaches on the Polish Facebook, any pictures or videos showing misbehaviors etc. The problem was they did nothing to prevent them. There were no lessons on Internet safety, privacy, or copy rights! Only 28 per cent of pupils told us their teachers had given any lesson about the guidelines to use the Internet.
But there is hope. We found out that teachers — however afraid — wanted to change their practice, learn more and share with pupils.
It is a paradox — almost all Polish schools have computers but they are rarely used during lessons other than computer science. It’s one of the reasons why teachers usually tell pupils what the rainforest looks like instead of showing it to them or sharing a link to YouTube.
Another reason is that nobody really cares if teachers innovate at work. “Despite all the governmental programs and official statements being innovative does not help teachers in their careers”, claimed our leading writer on education Aleksandra Pezda. “Their main goal is to prepare kids to national exams. And these exams are still very traditional. For example teachers fight with kids using computers to prepare homeworks claiming they would have to write exams by hand! Is this really the main problem of our age?!”
All these revelations made us think how to bring a change together with teachers, parents and pupils themselves.

From School 1.0 to School 2.0

We asked numerous independent experts, non governmental organizations and companies to help us. We want to prepare over this summer and introduce this fall new teaching materials to Polish schools, train their teachers and provide them an online platform to share experiences and good practices.
It’s going to be the largest and the most expensive social campaign this year just after our “Humane healthcare” activity. We’re now securing sponsors and merit partners.
We count on participation of at least 7,000 schools that have engaged into our earlier educational campaigns called School with Class. We run them for many years together with the Center of Civic Education, a non-governmental organization.
We are going to start in September by announcing a new Codex of School 2.0, a list of issues and ideas how to include new technologies in education.

• When and how to use computers at schools and homes to help pupils succeed in education and their adult lives?
• How to use Internet tools creatively, safely and responsibly?
• How can new technologies help students to work together on their projects?
• How to improve communication between teachers, pupils and parents?
• How should they adjust lesson plans, homework tasks, exams?

The Codex will not serve as a final list of orders for schools. Its aim is rather to start internal debates at schools and then to inspire them to adopt the results of these debates.
Schools will get a set of new teaching materials for free and will be able to apply for online training programs for their teachers. The most active ones will get additional support and become Labs 2.0.
All teachers will be free to start their own projects — plan and run innovative Lessons 2.0 or other activities — and to share their experiences with others on the Internet platform. We’re going to name Teachers 2.0 — the most creative and innovative — over the school year.
The best case studies will be presented at the national conference for teachers we want to organize next June. We will call this event Festival of Schools 2.0. It will include professional discussions and presentations to young people.
Additionally, the best Polish experts will work on sample exam questions to help the authorities in opening Polish exam system to innovations. We will invite schools to participate in the trail exams. We’ve got some experiences in such trials — we organize them every year in association with Operon, a leading publisher of schoolbooks. Over 300,000 students took our trial exams in 2009.
Last but not least we will publish a guide for teachers and parents about all the Internet tools that kids have been using already and that could be applied in education also — like wikis, blogs, Twitter-like feeds, Facebook-like networks, photo and video sharing sites etc.

Why it is a newspaper that may help

We believe in building bridges across generations. We don’t build ghettos for young readers and try to engage them into the regular newspaper and our campaigns instead. It works — we are happy with one of the youngest readerships across Polish newspapers: 53 per cent of Gazeta Wyborcza’s readers are younger than 40 and almost every fifth

young Pole aged 15-29 reads Gazeta at least once a week. In 2008 the World Association of Newspapers awarded us with the title of the World Young Reader Newspaper of the Year.
Education is on our radar for many, many years. We were supporting reforms of the system in 90s and 2000s. Our campaign called “Schools with Class” is widely recognized among educators. Many teachers are our readers. As we know and trust each other, there is just a small step to do something together again.
We are not afraid of the Internet world. We have embraced it many, many years ago and today our online portal Gazeta.pl is the fourth largest website here after Google, a Polish clone of Facebook and a TV-owned portal. It attracts 11,8 mln users in a month. It’s 66% of all 17,8 mln Polish Internet users (Poland has 38 mln inhabitants in total.)
And finally, here at Gazeta we believe that our mission is broader than just delivering honest news. We initiate and support nationwide social campaigns like “Kids get home” , “Poland runs”, “Dad’s return”, “Transparent Poland”, “Let’s save Rospuda”, “Humane birth”, “Humane healthcare”, “Loose weight with us”. Readers know our campaigns bring the real change and so they are happy to get involved.

If you want to learn more about this and other social campaigns of Gazeta Wyborcza, meet me from September 29 to October 1, 2010, in Kraków at the INMA/OPA Europe Newsmedia Conference. I am one of the organizers as the Vice-President of INMA in Europe — Grzegorz Piechota

Gazeta is the best read quality daily in Poland, a country that is a host of this year’s INMA/OPA Europe Newsmedia Conference held in the royal city of Kraków from September 29 to October 1, 2010.

Gazeta’s average paid circulation is 347,000 and it reaches about 4,2 million readers a week. Its online portal — Gazeta.pl — attracts over 11 million users a month. Gazeta runs also several mobile websites and applications for iPhone.

The goal of a new branding campaign for Gazeta launched this July is to show the newspaper is no longer about paper only as readers can access its news, comments and participate in its activities like social campaigns in their most convenient channel, place and time.

The slogan on out-of-home advertisements is “Wyborcza do wyboru” that means “Wyborcza is for choice” and is in fact a play of words as the word “Wyborcza” means “for choice”, “for elections” etc.

The multimedia advertising campaign — using television, outdoor, cinema, online — was created by an ad agency JIS Advertising and media were planned by Starlink.

Have a look at this new 3D animation produced by Lightcraft, a visual effects company based in Poland. It is being broadcasted now on Polish TV and at cinemas.

Newspapers see their future in multimedia

Gazeta’s campaign reminds me about other newspapers that decided to communicate their audience big changes in their organizations. These papers can easily be consumed today on multiple platforms.

Recently, INMA Ideas Magazine featured a story by my collegue from Brazil Marcelo Benez, an advertising director of Folha de Sao Paulo, about their recent campaign claiming: “Folha. Impossible not to read it, access it, twitter it or comment it.”

Here’s just one of the ads featured in the Magazine (to read more you need to be an INMA member).

This approach to newspaper branding has been promoted many times at the INMA congresses all over the world. At the European conference in Vienna in 2008 Innovation’s consultant Juan Antonio Giner showed this campaign by another Brazilian daily O Globo (based in Rio de Janeiro):

Diane Devriendt, marketing director of Vacature.com, told a story of a campaign launched by this Belgian Job Classifieds Media company.

Mrs. Devriendt and her collegue – the chief editor Marian Kin – spoke at the INMA/IFRA Classified Advertising Seminar, organized in Prague on October 22-23, 2008.

”To challenge Belgian people’s view on talent we needed to expand their view,” Mrs. Devriendt explained.

Their ”Talent Manifesto” campaign was a social programme for ”a sustainable approach to talent recruitment”. A campaign that used all the classic and new media platforms.

”Our target was to expand the definition of ‘talented men and women’ in Belgium,” added Mrs. Kin.

They focused on four grops of people which find it hard to get recruited:

• people over 50
• immigrants
• people with a handicap
• foreigners

Thousands of persons signed the manifesto, many more acknowledged the campaign and appreciated it.

“The manifesto and campaign ‘Talent Manifesto’ gave Vacature.com a positive brand image. It was an opportunity to promote advertisers, especially the once that actively promoted the values behind the manifesto,” said Marian Kin.

Here are some TV commercials from the Vacature.com campaign:

”People over 50 are priceless”

”People with a handicap can work”

”Foreigners come here for our prosperity”

”Immigrants want our jobs”

Mr. Asselin spoke at a recent INMA Outlook 2009: European Conference in Vienna, on October 1-3, 2008, about The Gazette’s marketing campaign: ”Words Matter”.

”After this campaign the perception of the paper was better, it was perceived as being more innovative, less conservative – only with this marketing image campaign”, he said.

”We did no change in design and no real major changes in the way editorial department would work. So it was almost 100-per cent marketing solely campaign that changed the brand image,” he added.

The campaign had three stages:

1. ”The first thing we did was to look at our starting position with research. That was key to find out that readers perceived us as conservative, not very innovative, old-fashioned, because the Gazzette is a paper that was founded in 1778, so it is a 230-years-old brand.”

2. ”So we created a brand image campaign: ‘The Gazette – Words Matter.’ We launched in 2006 with a famous front page with no words. And then we kept going with ads in the paper, radio spots, TV commercials, on and on.”

Here is the front page with no words:

Watch one of the TV commercials:

Here are the outdoor ads:

3.”And then we added content on that umbrella to support for example a special series on sleeplessness. So we had the ‘Words Matter’ campaign to promote the content.”

Here is an ad promoting the editorial series on sleeplessness Mr. Asselin is talking about:

”So we were hitting the same nail all the time to make sure people will see our campaign as being smart, helpful, open-minded, innovative to change the image of the newspaper”, says Mr. Asselin.

So did The Gazzette’s newsroom play no role in the process of changing the image of the paper?

Mr Asselin explained: ”The editor-in-chief, my collegue I work with, knew that I was just preparing a ground for him to change the way we report the news, to introduce more web products. For example we launched two or three new websites. I am not sure if we had kept the image that we had two years ago that we would be able to launch new innovative websites. There would have been a bigger clash between the brand image and the product.”

Could not they do it the other way around: change the content and then change the image?

”We could, but we preffered to start with change the brand image and slowly work with the content. But it had to follow. Otherwise, it would only be – what I call – smokes and mirrors for two, three years and then a reader doesn’t see enough changes. He likes the brand campaign and then you create a disconnect with a content on the other hand.”

Watch full interview with Bernard Asselin

(Interview made by Artur Karda, multimedia reporter at Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.)

More information on The Gazette’s campaign

• Read a report from Mr. Asselin’s speech at the INMA conference.
• Read the Gazette’s article: ‘Words Matter’ campaign earns international kudos.
• Watch some other TV commercials:

UPDATE: Read latest news about this movie: Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz reveals that Pope John Paul II was wounded by a priest in 1982 and kept it in secret.

The movie titled ”The Testimony”, or “A Life With Karol”, is based on memoirs of cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish pope’s personal secretary for 40 years and his closest friend.

His memoirs Written with Italian-Polish journalist Gian Franco Svidercoschi were published in 2007 as a book. It has already appeared in more than a dozen languages, and has made the best-seller lists in Italy and Poland – where it was distributed by Agora, the publisher of the largest quality newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, and has reached a circulation of over 1 million copies.

”A Life with Karol” abounds to the key role John Paul II played in some of the most consequential events of his time and offers a close look at the Karol Wojtyla’s private life – 27 years as pope and his 12 years as a priest and Polish archbishop before that.

The movie

The premiere in Vatican will be a highlight of the 30th anniversary of John Paul II’s pontificate organised by the Holy See. The official event will take place in the Paul VI hall and will be attended by pope Benedict XVI, as well as guests from all over the world.

The next day, on October 17th, the movie will hit theatres in Poland.

The movie is in fact a docu-drama, a cross between a documentary and a standard movie. Some events, for example from the Pope’s childhood, are performed by actors and have been shot in Poland, Italy, France and Germany.

Cardinal Dziwisz himself plays a role in the movie. His memoirs are supported with documents, photos and videos from Vatican’s archives that have never been shown publicly before.

Dziwisz and Svidercoschi have collaborated with a movie director Pawel Pitera on the script.

The movie’s narrator is a British actor Michael York who starred in ”Cabaret” (1972), ”The Three Musketeers” (1973, 1974 and 1989), ”Jesus of Nazareth” (1979).

The music is written by a Greek composer Vangelis - best known for his Academy Award winning score for ”Chariots of Fire” (1981), and scores for ”Blade Runner” (1982) and ”1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992) – and a Polish musician Robert Janson.

The movie has been produced by TBA Group in association with Vatican’s publishing house Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Poland’s Agora (publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza), NewCast/ZenithOptimedia Group and Network Production.

Trailer of the movie is available on its official site (in Polish):

The book

A native Pole like John Paul II, cardinal Dziwisz is now the archbishop of Krakow, a post held by the pope before his election in 1978. Dziwisz was elevated to cardinal in 2006 by pope Benedict XVI.

The book ”A Life with Karol. My forty-year friendship with the Man who become Pope” is an intimate and affectionate portrait of John Paul II and reveals new details about the opinions, hopes, fears, and dramatic life of this public man.

“I had accompanied him for almost forty years: twelve in Cracow and then twenty-seven in Rome. I was always with him, always at his side. Now, in the moment of death, he’d gone on alone. . . .And now? Who is accompanying him on the other side?,” asks Stanislaw Dziwisz.

The cardinal and Karol Wojtyla first met in in 1957, when Dziwisz was a young seminarian.

In 1966, three years after Dziwisz was ordained by Wojtyla, the future pope called him as his personal secretary. Dziwisz asked when he should start. “Today will work,” Wojtyla replied.

Dziwisz was by John Paul’s side at all the key moments of his papacy, including the assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, when the author caught the stricken pontiff in his arms, then gave him last rites on the operating table.

After John Paul’s recovery, Dziwisz went with him to visit his imprisoned assailant, Mehmet Ali Agca. To the pope’s distress, the Turkish gunman did not ask for forgiveness, but wanted only to know: “So why aren’t you dead?” Having heard that John Paul attributed his survival to intervention by the Madonna of Fatima, Ali Agca “was afraid that this powerful goddess would avenge herself on him and ‘get rid of him,”‘ Dziwisz writes.

John Paul concluded that the leaders of the Soviet Union had ordered his assassination out of fear (ultimately well-founded) that he would inspire an anti-Communist revolution in Poland. “Don’t all roads, however disparate they are, lead to the KGB?” Dziwisz writes.

The book has lighter moments, too, including an account of John Paul’s surreptitious skiing excursions early in his papacy.

Accompanied by a few priests and no bodyguards, the pope rode in the back seat of an ordinary car, with a front-seat passenger holding open a newspaper to shield him from view. On the slopes, John Paul “was dressed like everyone else: parka, cap, goggles,” yet long went unrecognized. “After all, who could imagine that a pope would go skiing?” Dziwisz writes. An astonished 10-year-old boy finally blew the pontiff’s cover.

Dziwisz describes the pope’s daily life, including his dining habits. “He wouldn’t take much, but he would try everything,” though he had a weakness for Italian sweets and coffee. His preferences in television viewing included documentaries and the news, “but he wasn’t adverse to movies.”

For the second half of his 26-year reign, John Paul was increasingly plagued by Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, and actually considered resigning on his 80th birthday in the year 2000. Though he decided against it, Dziwisz writes, he “did work out a procedure for resigning should he no longer be able to carry out his papal mission.”

The cardinal’s account of John Paul’s last hours is filled with poignant detail. A picture of the pope’s mother and father sat on his nightstand. He died listening to a priest read from the Gospel of John. Afterward, those present sang a hymn of praise, not mourning. “We wanted to thank God for the gift he had given us,” Dziwisz writes.

How a newspaper publisher has entered the movie industry?

”A Life with Karol” is not the first movie made with Gazeta Wyborcza’s involvment.

In 2007 the newspaper co-operated with producers of “The Team”, the first TV series in Europe that debuted in the newspaper, instead of television.

By the way, this TV series is in the semi-finals of the International Emmy Awards 2008 competition. Official nominees will be announced on October 13th, 2008, in Cannes.

As Alfred Hitchcock taught, it started with an earthquake. In the middle of the night phones started ringing in several appartments. People woke up and learned that some forgotten files had been found in the archives of communist secret services. There was a rumour that those files would prove that current prime minister, well known former dissident was in fact a communist spy in the past. The government fell into the crisis…

“The Team” was a political fiction. It showed a government and reality of ruling a country from insider’s perspective. It touched with the most important issues of today’s politics in Poland, but there were no easy links to parties, people or events.

“The Team” was co-directed by Cannes-winner and Oscar-nominee Agnieszka Holland famous for her movies like “Europa Europa” (1991), ”Olivier, Olivier” (1992), “Secret Garden” (1993).

It starred the most popular Polish actors, ie. Andrzej Seweryn who starred in Robert Enrico’s “The French Revolution” (1989) and Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” (1993).

The screenplay was co-written by a journalist covering politics.

It was the first such series in Poland’s history after the collapse of communism – the topic, the quality, the budget was outstanding. So was outstanding the way it debuted.

Before the first episode was broadcasted in any television channel, it was distributed on DVDs to 60,000 newstands, shops and petrol stations together with Gazeta Wyborcza.

So on Friday, September 7th, 2007, readers could buy their favourite newspaper for 40 eurocents and – if they wanted – they could also buy a DVD for 3 euros.

The same episode was broadcasted in the largest Polish commercial TV Polsat for the first time next Thursday (Sept. 13th).

On Friday, Sept. 14, Gazeta was selling DVDs with the next episodes, scheduled to be aired on TV the following week. And so on – the whole series consisted of 14 episodes.

Gazeta cooperated with the production team from the start.

We were involved in creating and executing the marketing and PR strategy for the series. For example we created its official website full of multimedia content like video interviews, clips from the backstage, stories on directors, screenplay writers and actors.

The series and the collection was promoted in all our media: Gazeta, our freesheet Metro, our magazines, radio stations and our billboards.

As media play important role in today’s politics, they played also a role in the serie. In “The Team” you could see people who learned about a change of the prime minister from our newspaper, or listening to Gazeta’s radio, or logging in to Gazeta’s internet news portal.

The series proved to be a financial success and had a great impact on the Polish political, artistic and newspaper scenes.

In the campaign before the October 2007 elections politicians and journalists used movie characters as a reference and talking points. We were discussing if politics could be ever fair? Where were the limits of propaganda?

This innovative model opened new revenue opportunities for all the parties involved – for a newspaper, for television stations, for production companies and for artists. Gazeta’s publisher decided to go further into entertainment business and published numerous premiere music records in a similar model.

The model proved that newspapers had an access to very effective distribution chain (newsstands around a country) and marketing power of itself.

(Article contributed by Malgorzata Skowronska, a special project manager at Agora, the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza)