With a commitment to print combined with its strong digital focus, Swedish publisher Bonnier is on the way to automating page production across almost three-quarters of its 40 titles.
Editorial director and Bonnier News Local business area manager Pia Rehnquist talks of a “culture project” involving changing workflows, some design and production practices, and pushing the boundaries of technology.
In an INMA content strategies blog, she says the many benefits include eliminating “gaps” in the work day through the shifting of deadlines for print production – eliminating gaps in the work day when print producers were waiting for articles – and “significant cost savings” in print production. She said adopting a common design across each of the titles had made the automation process easier, and flexibility in the design had allowed reporters to focus on writing stories without worrying about the exact word count.
Naviga content management senior vice president Ronnie Willis says that when discussions about automated print layout started “a few years ago”, the premise had been simple – “get a list of articles, link their photos, and click the ‘newspaper’ button”.
“Of course, it wasn’t exactly that simple, and it was much more than a question of technology,” he recalls, but says results have been “measurable”.
After a pilot publication began automating pages in December 2023, Bonnier has since rolled out print automation across several groups of publications, with improvements to the output after each iteration.
“Any project of this scale will come with challenges,” he says. “Those challenges are amplified when the technology is new. Rehnquist and the Bonnier team had one response for that – ‘challenge accepted’.
The publisher had the advantage of having already developed a strong digital focus. Nearly 60 per cent of its subscriber base is digital, but print remained a key part of the Bonnier strategy, and many digital readers still prefer the e-paper product.
“This is a very important aspect of the automation project,” Rehnquist says of the e-paper. “We will have a very efficient way of making e-newspapers.”
Rehnquist said Benjamin Peetre, senior business developer for Bonnier Local’s print products, had been a key driver of the project’s success. Petre was “very ‘all-around’, coming from the layout team, and a very good mathematician.
“He’s not afraid of technology, and he’s been very devoted.”
Peetre worked with newsroom leaders to understand production processes and deadlines. He also ensured Bonnier’s processes evolved with the technology’s increasing capabilities and stayed true to Bonnier’s business focus.
He says when Bonnier took on its redesign project, the goal was to simplify the design generally.“Our goal was to make it easier to manually edit the pages, but (then) we thought that if it’s easier to manually edit the pages, it would be easier for (automation) to edit the pages as well.
“So there’s no conflict between those goals.”
In earlier designs, reporters had to deliver an article with the exact amount of characters required. A more flexible design meant reporters did not to have to think about print at all. “We don’t want the reporters to be forced to write articles with a specific length to fit a specific template,” he said.
Wills says that having taken on the challenges of adopting new technology and evolving its organisational processes, Bonnier has positioned itself to evolve as the industry and reader preferences evolve. “It has managed significant change within the organisation while making sure its focus stays on providing the journalism its readers expect.”
At WAN-Ifra’s World News Media Congress in Taipei in 2021, Rehnquist (pictured) told how maintaining print meant “leveraging money from the print business for overall transformation”.
As part of a strategy, Bonnier had developed a clear focus on digital subscription revenue – amassing 2.2 million subscribers – “climbing the advertising value chain” and developing niches/new products, especially for new, younger audiences.
“These strategies have proven to be successful and the numbers speak for themselves,” she said at the conference.
Pictured: Pia Rehnquist at WAN-Ifra’s World News Media Congress (photo WAN-Ifra)