speaker: Holger Windfurheinspielen

topic: Die Schlüsselrolle der Sonntagsausgabe in der Online-Strategie der FAZ

die Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung Play is an Essential role in all Channels in the whole world of the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

let's dive into the

start with a design because the design is informed by the DNA and by the types of stories that the Sunday Paper is very strong.

Das ist der Starting Point of our covers either O Story issue.

nationalists in the world.

den Influx of Sorry, but the influx of massive amounts of cocaine in Europe in Germany because of criminal organizations.

And then the other topic was the nosedive in the American, in the German economy.

And so we just showed the

From

Go down.

we break with this, we tried to break with the standard format as often as possible to keep things interesting.

the left is when the Pope was elected in the middle it's, it was shortly before the American elections.

And the stars have a meaning. Those are really the left and the democratic and the Republican states with the swing states in the middle that made all the difference.

And this the right example is the power of a simple infographic to inform. The story was about

How the German government can save money.

And this is a depiction of the entire federal budget of Germany.

And that big red rectangle in the upper left is the amount of money it takes every year to cover all pension costs.

And that's growing very quickly and on one, in one glance, you can get the gist of the story.

We do this once a year. It's not a huge seller, but our subscribers love it. It's a look, you back, I look back at the year.

I included the left um.

Left example to show we're not immune to advertising.

And this is also an example where the readers taught me a lesson, if you see the little, advent wreath next to the logo on top.

It was tradition to start 4 weeks before Christmas and then always add a candle.

And then of course when Christmas comes and when I came on board, I thought, it's kind of gimmicky.

So I said let's just take it out.

And we had a huge reaction from the readership, asking where it was and demanding it back, and of course we did. So it was a lesson in.

Be careful when breaking traditions.

great photography is a bedrock, of course, of the Sunday paper. we have 4 photographers, 2 on staff, and 2 visual journalism students that rotate in.

Each one does about 300 productions a year.

very productive. These are just a couple of examples, modern witches on the left.

A horse trainer on the right whose face we didn't even show.

And a female roller derby team.

Expressive typography is also something, we like to do when, when it's appropriate.

A story about the rise of an extreme right in Germany and the calls for the government to do something about it and the difficulty the German government has in doing so.

the middle is the um.

The Protestant Church in Germany and supposedly they're very left leaning, we're examining is it really the case and so we just combined the cross with the logo of the Green Party in Germany.

And the right example is when the copyright for Mickey Mouse ran out the original steamboat Willie that's Walt Disney, drew.

And that was the story about that. We just gave it little Mickey ears.

Again, visually impactful infographics.

the left is a story about why, why are so many, why are there so many crises and what it does with the German psyche.

So the indeterminant grin or frown on the face is a graph about how Germans see their future beginning with 1950 with the Korean War.

So you can see it's quite a bit of up and down.

The middle is showing the dominance of 3 tennis players in the Grand Slam since 1991.

And the right example is a group of islands just off the coast of China that actually belongs to Thailand, and what the, what that entails.

Highlight is a double page illustration.

infographics reportage photography, illustration.

the left one is just an example of what happens at the end of life, with clothes, do they really get recycled or what happens to them?

And then, the riot was a fantastic image that the editor, discovered while he was researching the story. It's, I've never seen a picture like this before. I didn't even know that so many different types of strawberries existed. This is all the different types of strawberries.

And this is also where scale in a large format newspaper really makes a difference if you see this image on the full size, it's really something.

And of course illustration, we work with great illustrators worldwide. Some of them we do ourselves.

But a lot of illustrations we commissioned.

And the left one is there's the, that sexuality or sex is overburdened with meaning.

the middle is the rise of the Olympic and forcing the insurance companies to reevaluate the mortality tables because people are living longer and what does it mean for insurance rates, etc.

And then the right one is a great story. An editor found out that stenographers in German parliament, they actually write down.

When a party laughs.

And they categorise it in two labs, either a heartfelt laughter or a malicious laughter.

Mean laughter.

And he found out that the AFD as a party was the one that by far had the most laughter and malicious laughter of all the parties. I thought it was a very interesting approach.

Couple more that's an illustration we do ourselves, story about a workshop on how to write literature. We string and photographed it.

In the middle, it was a time when every football player seemed to have the same haircut.

And we kind of decide, you know, dissected what the haircut is an illustration and then last example is the rise of childhoodness childlessness.

And the decline of marriage in China and what it means.

And the last example for illustrations a fantastic illustration by Edwin Dejaro, from Spain. It's about extreme passivism and what's behind it.

And the collision with reality as it is right now.

the second one is using white space for the for the reader to complete the image themselves.

Underneath the bottle

And the last example is about taboo subject men who are also in abusive relationships.

Now please

This was a quick run through of the design, but please keep in mind the types of stories that these articles are.

We have 3 different versions basically of the newspaper of course the print version, but we also offer two digital versions. One is the classical e-paper.

with the reader mottos and the second one is a bespoke edition, it's called.

And it's reformatted material so this ideally readable on mobile devices, and we offer both.

See if this works.

Yes

This is just a quick video showing the two. This is our kiosk. You can choose either the addition.

Or the e-paper.

The e-paper is

zoom.

You can zap through the, through the different sections.

This is, the viewer at my age I had to increase the size of the type.

And just a quick look at the addition. This is the reformatting we have 5 editors that reformat, every issue.

Sunday paper and the daily newspaper, both of these apply to both.

They have a special section in the beginning about top topics that point to

important topics within the issue.

This is the

optimised format for reading on mobile devices. We also enrich it with storytelling.

we add, links, podcasts, interactive materials like if you want to search what's going on in Frankfurt, there's an art, there's a space to do that so you can look for concerts, whatever, museum shows.

Also you have your personalised weather, in this app.

Of course we're facing the challenges that every publisher in the world is facing, to the left is the daily newspaper circulation to the right.

The Sunday newspaper circulation.

But if you notice, our digital editions are growing.

Growing about 2 or 3% a year slowly but surely.

If you look at our digital subscriptions as a whole, we have about 160,000 subscribers to our website.

And 70,000 each for the Sunday paper and the daily newspaper.

And we don't give it away for free.

what are they?

One second, the Sunday paper costs 25.90 a month.

And the daily newspaper costs 47.90 a month.

And even our print subscribers have to pay for an upgrade, so the Sunday newspaper print subscribers pay €4 extra a month and the daily newspaper readers pay €8 a month.

Now I'm going back to the types of stories, if you look at the user needs model, which was first developed by the BBC and this is the version that the writers did with the University of Oxford.

This is a classification of the types of stories, that users want and, are getting.

The top two are like the classical news stories, keep me engaged, update me, educate me, give me your perspective.

But the bottom two are more, I guess you would say the softer topics like divert me inspire me.

news that makes me feel connected. News that provides practical advice in day to day living.

Reuters also did a country surveys, pinpointing exactly what percentage of the readers in that culture.

are looking for

70% the classical news content, but 40%.

The other two

This is a list of the top 10 converting articles just from the daily newspaper in 2024.

If you look, I didn't, I'm sorry I didn't translate these all into English.

But so was it to say there's only one.

That comes from classical news.

All the rest fall within the bottom two categories and the user needs.

If you add the Sunday newspaper to the mix.

Over 50%.

Of all conversions, people going to and following an article, liking the article and subscribing to the website.

Over 50% of the top 25 in 2024 came from the Sunday paper.

Even though it only comes out once a week.

The same thing holds true.

For social visits.

Over 50% from the Sunday paper.

So in 2024, we sold in all in total in all emailing shop, stories, etc. 185,000 new.

website subscribersats plus is what we call it.

Of those, 100,000 were generated just through stories.

And of those,

And that number is probably a bit high. It's more probably between 900 and 100,000.

Of those, 27,000 came from the Sunday paper.

So almost 30% of all new subscribers come from.

The paper

So it's punching way above its weight. I mean, if you do the math.

Per, per Sunday, Sunday newspaper there it generates twice as much, twice as many subscribers.

As the daily newspaper.

So it's very efficient.

And, and then you ask yourself, OK, the, the bottom two.

Classifications of user needs.

How

How are they retention rates.

For

these people coming in through these articles.

Do they, do they expect to see more of those articles because we're very, very focused, of course, this daily newspaper on, on the top two.

And when we look at the retention rates,

They're almost exactly the same.

So

I, I sped through it, so I, I made up some time, I think.

So, it's vital, the Sunday newspaper is absolutely vital, for the success of the entire strategy.

and

Thank you.

very impressive demonstration you hooked the yeah, I remember that I have to find the article in the archive. Thank you very much. thank you very much, Hogainfoil.

Man.