Portugal’s i hailed as newspaper of the future
Peter Preston — who spent 20 years as editor of the Guardian of London — has found the newspaper of the future: A Lisbon, Portugal-based tabloid that started publication about six months ago.
It’s called i. And yeah, we’ve written about it here a couple of times.
i is a complete reworking of the old print model, Preston gushes, split into four distinct sections:
First, opinion and comment; then Radar, the news in small, pre-digested chunks. Zoom, the heart of the paper at section three, is all long articles on significant topics; and More, at four, mops up everything else.
Juan Antonio Giner of Innovation — which built i’s concept prototypes last fall — is high on the tabloid as well. About this election front that published a week or so ago…
Powerful photo. Strong picture editing. Excellent copy. What’s next approach.
Brilliant!
Preston concludes:
So little creative effort has gone into rethinking poor old print. But i is a newspaper radically reshaped from scratch, finding out what readers want – and giving it them in the order they want it. Circulation: up 16% in the last two months. Possibilities: clear, and startlingly at odds with dreary, accepted wisdom.
The design director of i is Michigan State graduate and former Virginian-Pilot designer Nick Mrozowski. When we last heard from Nick, he was celebrating his publication’s 100th edition with this wacky miniaturized replica of that day’s edition:
Nick writes:
Thanks for pointing that out. It’s great to see that other people are noticing what we’re trying to do here.
We’re working our tails off! I have the pleasure to be in a newsroom full of relentless innovators; these guys know how to dream big.
We must give credit also to Juan Antonio Giner, Javier Errea and the other folks at Innovation for their great work that set a high standard for us to live up to from the outset.
Find Preston’s column here. Find Juan Antonio’s blog here.
October 5th, 2009 at 2:10 am
It makes me very happy to know that Nick has managed to find a paper that is as good as, if not better than, Link.
It’s too bad, though, that there aren’t a lot of papers like this in the U.S. Link was (and RedEye still is) the closest I’ve seen.
I think a lot of papers are afraid to loosen the ties and not be beholden to convention, which is where true reinvention stems. I hope someday I get a chance to do something as cool as Link again, because it was a paper that truly understood that. Maybe someday.
Congrats on a great paper and continued success, Nick.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I had the managing editor of i in my week long class in Berlin in March and she showed me her paper pre-launch.
It’s a genuine stand-alone startup instead of thin ploy to grow readership of the mothership.
Unique in many ways.
From the the way they staffed their newsroom to their digital plan. Stunning and I predict we will see more copycats in the region soon.
If only it were so easy to copycat the real thing. Easy to say, very tough to execute.