Having famously put ‘online first’ in mid-2006, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner has been busy making sure journalists in the giant publisher’s Welt group could follow the directive. Ifra’s Newsplex unit set up workshops for more than 200 in the art of cross-media production, and reports that the Welt Online news portal (www.welt.de), is setting records for the number of page impressions and visits achieved. Prior to the initiative, the newsroom of ‘Die Welt, ‘Welt am Sonntag’, ‘Welt Kompakt’ and ‘Berliner Morgenpost’ in Berlin was already partly integrated, but more needed to be done to prepare the rest of the staff for cross-media publishing. Newsplex ran 20 specialised three-day workshops between September 2006 and the following October, providing background information and understanding of why the shift from print to multimedia publishing was necessary. Then participants moved to practising cross-media production including writing and planning for the web, multimedia storytelling, podcasting and producing audio slide shows.