Folge 166: „Wir müssen die coolste Party machen“ – welche Rolle lokale Medien heute haben

00:00:00: One of the main reasons for this polarization, there are multiple reasons, one of them being actually the complete sort of decimation of the local news ecosystem in the United States.

00:00:11: So over the last, you know, twenty years,

00:00:15: nearly

00:00:15: forty percent of local news organizations in the United States have gone away.

00:00:21: And I think that, you know, the fact that the only access to news is national news, which

00:00:28: is

00:00:29: usually the more polarizing conversations and not local news.

00:00:34: that really brings the community together, I think is a challenge.

00:00:38: And so I talk a lot about, you know, in America and think a lot about how do we make sure that we are supporting the local ecosystem so that there is healthy conversation in the community.

00:00:52: Without

00:00:52: local media, a society threatens to break apart.

00:00:54: You can see that in the USA for a while.

00:00:57: Unfortunately, only too good.

00:00:58: You disappear is at least one reason, maybe not the only one for breaking apart.

00:01:04: But it is important that we ask ourselves, what can we do to prevent the disappearing of local media?

00:01:17: What new business models, formats and applications do you need?

00:01:22: That's why it's time to go this time with.

00:01:23: This is Media Now.

00:01:24: Now let's go.

00:01:25: This is

00:01:29: media now.

00:01:30: Das Update für alle, die Medien machen.

00:01:44: Mein Name ist Luca Schöne und ich begrüße euch zu dieser Folge unseres Podcasts.

00:01:48: If we talk about journalism as a whole, the analysis is usually not too rosy, I would say.

00:01:55: The economic foundation becomes thinner, business models work in digital and, in addition to KI Search, certain traffic in the network no longer.

00:02:04: And journalism is also politically speaking, by populists and extreme forces, more and more into the bullet line.

00:02:11: And yet we can be very happy.

00:02:13: that we still have this media system in Germany, said Dr.

00:02:17: Christian Wegner, head of the South German department, at the summit of the media day Munich this year.

00:02:25: the media in Germany.

00:02:26: I think it's often, we make ourselves too bad and talk too little.

00:02:30: And if you look at what happened after the bad experience of the Second World War, where Söder also referenced it, I think we have created a great framework for the analogue media and have developed great for over eighty years, both in TV, in radio and in newspaper, and both privately and publicly legal.

00:02:47: And today we have, I think, a very, very well-financed public legal rundown.

00:02:51: We have, I think, almost three hundred newspapers that fight for it every day and also have a very important point in the local front.

00:02:59: We are still working in all regions.

00:03:00: And we have to keep that, because I think it is very, very important that independent and free journalism also takes place in the regions, in the newspapers.

00:03:07: In this sense, we really have a very, very strong media location in Germany, which is currently out in the international comparison.

00:03:20: But we also see that we are actually under attack on both sides.

00:03:25: One is that there is political determination to make the free media independent, as you can see in America or in China.

00:03:32: On the other hand, there are big new tech billionaires who are trying to become the business model.

00:03:38: So the basic situation is solid and the location is an important building stone in the journalism field here in the country.

00:03:48: We often say and can now also be considered by numbers from a new study, which among other things the journalist professor Wiebke Möhring from the TU Dortmund in the assignment BLM erhoben

00:04:11: hat.

00:04:16: Sixty percent say local media provide them with the knowledge in order to be able to enter the site.

00:04:30: This clearly serves as the participation function, a central democratic function.

00:04:50: And with a look at the criticism and control function, as well as almost sixty percent, the local media also critically report on the decision and development of the site.

00:05:01: Also here we have checked how much the majority of the use has an impact and we see that the more common people use local journalistic statements, the more strongly they agree to these statements.

00:05:14: So who regularly uses local journalism recognizes his value for democracy and society even more

00:05:22: clearly.

00:05:23: Interesting, however, that this importance also confirms people and recognizes those who do not use local media.

00:05:29: This shows there is potential.

00:05:32: And also with regard to trust, local journalism has great potential.

00:05:37: If we now come to trust and evaluation, we see that these currently written democratic roles can also possibly be linked

00:05:47: to the

00:05:48: fact that the local journalistic offers have a very high written trust.

00:05:53: Over fifty percent say that they... local journalistic offers, very confident, very, again, on the top two scale.

00:06:07: On the contrary, we have a whole series of institutions asked that the general media with forty-one percent something behind it, communal politics with thirty-eight percent, national politics thirty-two, federal politics with twenty-two percent.

00:06:23: So we see there.

00:06:25: that in the beginning, a characteristic of the neighborhood seems to reflect itself in the media usage scenarios and the explanation scenarios.

00:06:35: And then we asked the people how they evaluate certain aspects of their local journalistic offers.

00:06:43: And here we have four examples.

00:06:46: Seventy-four percent feel the local media closer to the people.

00:06:52: They find them more understandable.

00:06:54: They say that with up to forty-two percent of local media they build less topics and give forty percent that they trust local media more than over-regional.

00:07:06: All this is also to explain that what is reported in local journalism seems to be often over-examined.

00:07:13: Yes, that's true.

00:07:14: because it can

00:07:14: be described as good news.

00:07:17: Very nice.

00:07:18: On the one hand, it is the observable information.

00:07:22: Of course, on the other hand, local media still have another important function.

00:07:27: We asked, in what contexts do people have the feeling that local media for their social... in social everyday life and in social society are important.

00:07:41: And we see a very high mood with almost seventy percent of the statement that local media supplies fuel, fuel for exchange with others.

00:07:50: A very important function has been put out in research for decades.

00:07:56: Local journalism is not only about reading, but also about listening, but also about what you have heard or read.

00:08:07: And we also see that sixty-two percent feel the connection.

00:08:11: And with a look at the question, as you remember, we also asked

00:08:17: which

00:08:17: gaps would arise.

00:08:18: We have also put out two statements that count on this social function.

00:08:23: And that is also with almost seventy percent the mood that without local media there are fewer possibilities to discuss local topics publicly.

00:08:33: So that's exactly the pattern to the upper one.

00:08:37: And also almost half say that they assume that if there is no more local journalism, the social community will be weakened

00:08:45: on site.

00:08:46: Unfortunately, we see that local journalism, despite the good numbers, the good results in the surveys, is under pressure and many places just dare to disappear.

00:08:57: Redactions are closed or are put together and there are also insolvencies, e.g.

00:09:01: in the private radio area.

00:09:03: So what do we do?

00:09:05: Markus Knall, editor-in-chief of IPMedia, is making a new approach to what local journalism

00:09:12: should do.

00:09:13: To convey a message is no longer a good thing.

00:09:16: And that's not only five years ago, but in the last fifteen, twenty years, one thing is clear.

00:09:20: To transport pure information, which used to be the core of journalism, it's gone and it's no longer coming back.

00:09:27: And then you can say a hundred times, it's not good, it's not coming back anymore, it's the core of digitalization, it's gone.

00:09:34: It's like when I buy a phone and call it, it's the least I can do with a smartphone.

00:09:39: And it's gone in a necessary condition, it's just expected, a job to be done, that's what you call it.

00:09:46: That means you need a new value that says,

00:09:49: don't let me

00:09:51: go because of information transmission.

00:09:54: This is changed, but because of other values.

00:09:56: And that's why the trust study is so important.

00:09:59: Because we have to upload this trust with something new.

00:10:02: And when we say, go out on the day of the location, it speaks to the reader.

00:10:06: That's why it's this personal connection.

00:10:09: And whether I now transport a message, it has, to be honest, become sustainable.

00:10:13: There are other values that explain the connection.

00:10:15: Because what does OpenAI and Co don't have?

00:10:18: OpenAI doesn't have two thousand journalists like us in the country.

00:10:21: And Microsoft doesn't have that either.

00:10:23: We have people... How can a new definition look like?

00:10:25: Or how can a supplement of the journalistic core tasks look like in the local?

00:10:28: About that, Prof.

00:10:30: Rainer Nübel

00:10:36: spoke at the MediaTagemünchen.

00:10:42: He is a professor for media and communication management at the Hochschule Frisinius in Heidelberg.

00:10:48: to define the support and support of democratic civil society as main tasks.

00:10:57: I don't think it's a sign of study that many people already know how to deal with problems.

00:11:02: It's not about the distance of this fetish, which I, like a monstrosity, have brought to me, but about the distance, the critical distance, to reduce political, economic, and co.

00:11:12: Also not necessarily to practice what used to be a long-standing journalism, but to say that democracy is under enormous pressure, and it is the task of the media as one part of this society.

00:11:29: This civil society, which at the moment, and that was in the panels before, always the subject, which represents the majority, at least at least seventy percent of the democratic parties still vote, but they themselves are no longer so strongly excluded.

00:11:44: The loud ones are rather in the minority.

00:11:47: How does it work, then, that aside from the classical journalistic tasks, maybe this approach of democratic civil society is changed?

00:11:55: We think that it could also be of economic interest if you, in addition to the existing business model, are moderated, especially in local and regional journalism.

00:12:07: What do we mean by that?

00:12:08: We have the great opportunity in local spaces to be much more flexible, so to speak, in the large areas of the country, or federal level, you can see it in a smart city like Barcelona, but also in German cities, that things can be solved there, and more and more cities in the morning, They are dissolvable under the influence of themselves.

00:12:30: So, participatively, they gain trust in the state, hopefully also in the media.

00:12:36: As it

00:12:36: could look like, a strong civil society, he also spoke about this and set up a pilot project.

00:12:44: There

00:12:45: is a pilot project that has worked with two former fats, not journalists, but people who have worked in the media management.

00:12:53: and we have now found the first local times, the interests of the so-called license.

00:13:01: The idea is that, as media have received, after forty-five licenses, to secure democracy, to further develop democracy, local media licenses can also be applied to the population, to the local society, by offering, we offer, for you, to discuss current topics.

00:13:27: Not just to talk about it once, to think about the classic story, or the classic story, that would also crash, but things structurally, in relation to the population, in analogical settings, through perspective workshops, search workshops, through formats that give the citizens the opportunity to proactively implement their solutions.

00:13:50: And at the same time also social functions areas to give licenses for their symbolism to the Hedokal Reduction, in which they say, okay, we offer you again, also for events with such resonance rooms, in which we are looking at things on a local level.

00:14:09: to discuss, but not only discuss, but really bring the constructive scene forward.

00:14:15: The

00:14:15: civil society strengthens.

00:14:17: That is one approach and another question.

00:14:20: The local journalism revolves around the age of the user, because that is quite high in the local area, as well as Markus Knallweiß.

00:14:29: How do we create a feeling of value again with users?

00:14:35: Here in the audience there are a lot of young people.

00:14:37: We are very attractive.

00:14:38: For you at the end, how do we do it relevant?

00:14:42: And if the newspaper still smells like Oma, then of course a lot of people say, yes, it's important, yes, then they do all the requirements in the study of Professor Mörrung and say, it's important, use it not, but we just saw it is important.

00:14:55: So that means you also have to do something so that you become a younger, fresher, digital, female again.

00:15:00: Of course, we don't have enough, there are enough women in journalism, but there are not enough on the distribution levels.

00:15:07: And then it's all about telling a story, telling a positive future strategy.

00:15:12: What value do we have?

00:15:13: We've already heard about trust.

00:15:15: It's important, but we'll tell it even cooler and fresher.

00:15:17: If the party isn't as big as it used to be, because the location is still half as big, then at least we'll make the shortest party.

00:15:24: And a cool party, to stay in the picture, makes Alexandra Haderlein with the relevant reporters

00:15:31: in Dörenberg.

00:15:31: So in the end we try to bring people in contact with each other.

00:15:36: That's the main thing for us.

00:15:39: Yes, we all get it every day with us.

00:15:41: We are much to see in our filter blasts, whether it's on social media or in real life.

00:15:44: Yes, we just don't talk to each other anymore, at least not in the majority.

00:15:49: And in our sense, it is that we say, OK, we are in the media, we have written our democracy.

00:15:52: We have as journalists a damn task again.

00:15:55: And accordingly, it is for us the assignment to say, OK, not only to write an article that maybe someone reads or not, but to say, OK, we are also the possibilities of a dialogue.

00:16:06: So, specifically, we do.

00:16:07: In fact, at least once a month a event, various types, try us there, thanks to the partners, i.e.

00:16:14: pensions that fund us, we can get really great out of there.

00:16:19: And from the public editorial conference, where we really invite people to sit together on the table, bring their topics with us, and actually to experience in addition, how journalists sort information, evaluate how information is transmitted.

00:16:37: where you can actually take on-the-go with you.

00:16:40: There have been other workshops about disinformation, but also about events, about the very normal local political issues, which will take place in Münster or Regensburg, or in any other city, where we then, for example, We want to know what interests you on this topic.

00:17:11: What do you know?

00:17:13: Do you know someone we should connect to this research?

00:17:18: And so we had a huge heat research in the summer.

00:17:21: We had over a week and over a hundred and twenty answers to an ultra-long survey.

00:17:28: It took us half an hour to get to know each other, to be able to give us his lecture tips and so on.

00:17:35: We simply try to involve the user so that it is, in the end, you could say, a more participative journalism, which takes place in rooms and, above all, ensures that users get a feeling of self-employment again.

00:17:51: Because what we all experience is that we are powerless because of the feedback we have.

00:17:57: And that is, I think, the worst situation, because it is the nearest ground for populism and everything that comes after it.

00:18:02: And we have to give the people the feeling that they can change something.

00:18:05: And there the local space offers much more than the regional one.

00:18:09: The

00:18:10: relevant reporters are financed through pensions, organisations and other further parties.

00:18:16: But the goal here is to finance a community for a long time.

00:18:19: Yes, we have already arrived at the central question for local media.

00:18:26: Where does it come from?

00:18:27: That's money.

00:18:28: A topic that comes up when the local journalism is so important for a democracy, shouldn't the state do more?

00:18:35: In the media days, among others, Peter Müller spoke, chief editor of Augsburger Allgemein.

00:18:42: He

00:18:43: was, I think, here on the media.

00:18:57: I met him again on Tuesday at the Chancellor's Day, in a small round.

00:19:09: That's not coming.

00:19:09: But I think when we say, and the study has been put close, that local journalism is relevant for our democracy, then it doesn't matter how local journalism works in the state.

00:19:25: And I think the state should make sure that the framework conditions under which journalists and journalists work are partly fair.

00:19:34: Maybe just one example.

00:19:35: I am, as chief editor, like all my colleagues, responsible for all the pages that will be published with us in print, in digital, in newsletters, as a podcast.

00:19:45: The big digital platforms, you can do whatever you want.

00:19:50: There is a bit of a European rule that no one is allowed to use.

00:19:54: It is not fair.

00:19:56: Another example, there is now the increase of the minimum wage.

00:20:00: This is very relevant for my position in Augsburger Allgemeine.

00:20:03: We still have many readers who want to see our products in print.

00:20:06: A record of two hundred and fifty thousand from short before Ingolstadt to small Tehlern near Austria.

00:20:16: And this minimum wage, which every investor wants, costs our media group a two-digit million.

00:20:22: I have to save that somewhere first.

00:20:24: And when I see on the other side that the big platforms, which are in the right control, make long flights and go to Ireland, and lower taxes there, then that's not fair.

00:20:36: And that's why I would say this topic, when you ask for a start, this topic is a digital task.

00:20:43: This is also part of the agenda, when I heard that the Bavarian Prime Minister was not very enthusiastic about the media day.

00:20:49: But in Sunday talks, he demands local journalism.

00:20:54: He says, we belong to democracy.

00:20:56: And then I would say, Mr.

00:20:57: Söder, you can follow these Sunday talks, in which you can support this proposal from Berlin.

00:21:02: The same

00:21:03: conditions

00:21:04: for everyone.

00:21:05: That would be a better starting point.

00:21:07: And then it's about developing new business models that also carry digital ones.

00:21:12: One of them is The funding through Paid Content, through Abo-models, through the community, we've just heard it from the relevant reporters, and on such Abo-models and Paid Content, for example, the OVB-group in Rosenheim has worked intensively under business leader Florian Schiller in recent years.

00:21:31: This is a new solution for itself, from the perspective of the digital world in any case and also in the context of the whole, because these are subscribers.

00:21:43: and reader users that we wouldn't be able to catch in the old world anymore.

00:21:48: They don't read OVW, they don't want this product to be sold to them.

00:21:52: That's a different generation.

00:21:54: And we're trying to bind them to us with the new brand and with the young brand.

00:22:01: And we have to accept that it's no longer possible on this side.

00:22:08: But that's... Luxus Problem is a big word, but it's just like that, that we take a third stand next to print subscribers, ePaper and now plus build up there.

00:22:20: And we also see that over eighty percent of our plus subscribers are on the twenty-four portal.

00:22:26: They have just built up this brand affinity and we try to swim with the current and not against it.

00:22:36: In general, this has become an important

00:22:38: addition to

00:22:39: solutions.

00:22:40: Can

00:22:41: you tell us a

00:22:42: little

00:22:43: bit about how

00:22:43: the solutions

00:22:44: are divided?

00:22:45: In the core business, let me say news, about thirty percent are now sales solutions, pay content solutions, and seventy percent is marketing, and the relationship changes very strongly in a yearly way.

00:23:03: not necessarily because we lose the market, but because it comes with it, but also grows very strongly.

00:23:14: I think that's incredibly important, because at least I think it won't go long-term on its own from the market alone, in the competition pressure in which you find yourself.

00:23:30: And also, as I was just saying, core business is also very important to us.

00:23:41: We have built up further business areas around it in the last ten, fifteen years.

00:23:46: We also work on regional job fairs, which run very successfully and have an agency

00:23:53: business.

00:23:56: For example, for Rums, Medien in Münster, great name.

00:24:00: At the MediaTagen Gründer and Product Manager Marc-Stefan Andres was a guest.

00:24:06: And the money for the

00:24:09: total of twenty colleagues and colleagues,

00:24:11: there are also working students and free employees, comes through our subscription model.

00:24:15: We have two thousand and four hundred numbering subscribers, three and a half thousand, no more numbers, they get

00:24:21: a shorter

00:24:22: version of the medium and we have advertising.

00:24:23: And we have to, ninety percent is the subscription model, gives us the money and ten percent the advertising.

00:24:48: And the, we have from the beginning said that we We want to

00:24:55: prove

00:24:56: that there is such a mission for us, that there

00:25:03: is a business model in the

00:25:08: local market.

00:25:08: A new business model, if you don't have the old money of the big market.

00:25:12: When you use AI, that were just impossible

00:25:15: before.

00:25:16: I call it kind of the village journalist opportunity.

00:25:21: You, right now, no one can really afford to have a journalist in every village of like, two hundred, five hundred people or so.

00:25:29: But with AI and the usage of, for instance, public data, voting records, government budgets, infrastructure projects and so on, you could actually

00:25:38: write...

00:25:39: articles about

00:25:40: how that this

00:25:41: zip code vote even if there are very few people so you can kind of scale and stay hyper local.

00:25:48: I do think obviously journalism is an extremely

00:25:51: important part

00:25:52: of democracy and

00:25:54: while

00:25:55: I think there's a lot of pressure on it and I don't think the content that is the least unique, there will probably be fewer folks working in that, but it's also clear to me that AI will not take away a lot of the important parts of journalism, which are like editorial judgment, knowing what stories actually

00:26:17: matter

00:26:18: and having a sense for that, doing actual interviews with people and building human connections, doing investigative work and original reporting.

00:26:27: Building trust,

00:26:28: having a brand,

00:26:29: I think a lot of companies now need to

00:26:31: lean into their brands

00:26:34: and then thinking about just even asking the right questions.

00:26:38: fits into the reason why it is in this episode.

00:26:46: The value of local journalism and how AI can help to strengthen it.

00:26:55: Basically, every village needs a journalist or a journalist, says Socher and AI can, as I said, help.

00:27:02: How?

00:27:03: For example, this shows the company Article, which transforms the text into audio format and how it works and how that helps local journalism.

00:27:12: That's what Gründer Wolfweimer spoke about during the media days.

00:27:16: We

00:27:16: believe that local journalism on the one hand and podcasts on the other hand could be the most beautiful bromance since Asterix and Obelix.

00:27:23: And the best thing about it is the magic drink, namely the artificial intelligence, which is also ready.

00:27:29: That's why we're changing from HUSUM to FORZHEIM, from Aachen to Passau a lot.

00:27:39: Inhalts, many articles that were written anyway, in corresponding audio experiences, in automated podcasts and try to take as much work as possible from the editorial, so that they don't have to be active themselves, but be able to evaluate their content.

00:27:55: How exactly does this look like?

00:27:58: This is a bit of the process, how it typically works.

00:28:02: We'll start with the media house together.

00:28:05: Think about what kind of tonality you want to have in the first place, what kind of voice you want to have, one or two, and what time it's best published.

00:28:13: Is that really a morning briefing or maybe a homecoming holiday format?

00:28:17: What are the topics?

00:28:18: And then we usually get an RSS feed, i.e.

00:28:22: access to the content directly and filter out the daily topics for a podcast.

00:28:29: and optimize the whole thing for audio.

00:28:32: Because you probably know it yourself, this pre-read button on a news website, which is usually not so attractive, one-to-one pre-read, does not work with all the texts, they have been made for writing, therefore this audio optimization, that you can listen to well and gladly.

00:28:48: Yes, the texts will change a little bit, but just specialized for audio.

00:28:54: The third step is the quality check.

00:28:56: There are different KIs, if you like, that check each other, whether all the facts that were included in the original text were also included in the new KI podcast script.

00:29:20: First, when there is green light, it goes on to the editorial, which of course I still want to review again and watch.

00:29:39: Yeah,

00:29:45: ganz grundsätzlich zum Schluss.

00:29:47: Vieles, was wir in dieser Folge gehört haben, scheint jetzt nicht unbedingt Brand new to be.

00:29:52: Local journalism is important and remains above all relevant.

00:29:56: If he goes out more, the people themselves, the effectiveness he allows, debates on site, organized and moderated, people connected, is close, etc.

00:30:04: etc.

00:30:04: But even if that may not sound new, it still shows a trend.

00:30:08: Less to go on, which is digital platforms happen and what they show us, but more to listen to real people without the between switched tech oligopolies with their algorithms, that's maybe the way to go for journalism, for local journalism, for media in general.

00:30:28: And of course, especially in the local ones, that can be used particularly well.

00:30:34: That's it from me.

00:30:37: At this point, take

00:30:40: care,

00:30:40: stay stable and see you next time.

00:30:42: The update for all the media.