The Austrian state-funded news publisher closed its printed paper during the Table Stakes Europe programme and overhauled its website and newsroom and used audience-focused experiments to test different formats of telling stories. The key goal: to reinvent public service journalism in Austria by moving away from the legacy of centuries-old print notifications to the boundless opportunities of deploying digitally-delivered news and information needed by Austrian audiences to make their lives better.
Wiener Zeitung was a daily national newspaper founded in 1703, based in Vienna, the capital of Austria, which has a population of about 9 million. For the past two decades, the possibility of the government-owned paper closing had been on the horizon, and in October 2022 this scenario was confirmed. This started the process to strategically change the company into a publicly funded digital-only operation. The newsroom underwent a major reorganisation in 2023, with the closure of the world’s oldest newspaper at the end of June and on July 1, the launch of a new website, rebranded as WZ to move away from being seen as just covering Vienna (Wien in German) and aimed at young people between 20 and 29.
When WZ joined Table Stakes Europe in January 2023, it had a total circulation of 8,000 newspaper subscriptions. WZ’s service provider has said that by November 2023, WZ’s relaunched and refreshed website has had up to 3 million users since its launch. They have also launched a new TikTok channel that had 11,500 followers by November 2023, and Instagram followers went up by 46 percent from July to November 2023.
When the Wiener Zeitung team joined the Table Stakes Europe programme, the challenge they faced was immense.
Not only were they faced with the possible closure of the world’s oldest national daily newspaper, they had to develop a website as well as target and build new audiences, particularly Generation Z, with new content formats.
The fate of the newspaper was in a state of flux, with the law in the process of being changed in early 2023 which would herald its closure later in the year.
Companies would no longer be required to pay to publish public announcements, meaning the daily newspaper would be unprofitable and it would have to shut on June 30. (Incidentally, this closure meant that another TSE participant, Germany’s Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung, was now likely the oldest printed newspaper in the world.)
The number of journalists was expected to be reduced by about 60 percent, from about 55 people to 20.
While resistance internally to the transformation was expected, it was intense and added to the pressure on the TSE change agents.
For the team, led by Hannah Schaefer, Project Manager, and Katharina Schmidt, Product Owner, it proved to be another challenge to navigate, with newspaper journalists campaigning to keep the print edition and politicians debating the newspaper’s future in Austria’s parliament.
But the newspaper readership was in decline, with a circulation of 8,000 of mainly people over the age of 65. Hence the need to change direction and identify new audiences to sustain the viability of the business.
Against this backdrop, the TSE team were developing a new website with new formats with a launch date of July 1, while facing a situation where plans remained fluid, including the possibility of producing a magazine, with its print run and frequency to be decided.
The TSE team also faced another constraint – they were mandated by law to cover only certain topics such as politics, education, Austria as an economic power, history, science and the European Union.
Building new formats and channels
Meanwhile, the TSE team, including Project Managers Jan Forobosko and Verena Götzner, took a minimum viable product (MVP) approach to get the website to launch on time and were carrying out small user-tests on articles covering the economy, society, Europe and environment.
They were going for a personalised content approach where users could decide whether to read, listen or watch content and build a listening or reading list and so were also testing other formats such as podcasts and videos, including creating content for TikTok that was ready to go.
The team worked to targets, such as producing four podcast episodes for the launch month of July, and then releasing new episodes every week.
They also had a target of 14 pre-written articles and aimed to publish one to three articles a day post-launch. Plans for a magazine were postponed until 2024.
“With our existing resources and the multitude of providers in the market, we recognised that becoming the foremost source for breaking news was not feasible for us. Instead, we made the deliberate choice to publish content that is tailored to our target audience, of the highest quality, and constructive in nature,” said Hannah Schaefer.
Their early wins included:
- fewer tech difficulties;
- having the required number of prepared articles;
- producing a MVP that included a new homepage and social media content aimed at younger audiences as well as podcasts and videos; and
- developing KPIs which included time spent on page for each news product.
As the deadline for the newspaper closure came and went, anger in the newsroom began to dissipate.
After the redundancies had occurred, newsroom management could go on to restructure the newsroom and create a more inclusive workforce to bring people together and resolve problems quickly. As part of this, a buddy system was implemented whereby the new digital team members who had previously worked in print could have someone to go to about any problems or training issues.
As the project progressed, the TSE team had also rebranded the social media, identified new audiences, produced 16 podcasts, published short documentaries on YouTube with more than 580,000 views, produced two newsletters and two special TikTok series. The use of external companies, such as the digital publisher that produces the WZ’s social media content, has been crucial.
They also looked at what they could stop doing, which included:
- No longer covering press conferences;
- No longer publishing basic news agency copy; and
- Holding fewer meetings.
Creating a path to digital success
In the early days after the launch, they had 750K unique users a month and Instagram figures increased by a third in the first three weeks. In September, they launched a newsletter dedicated to politics, with other topic-focused newsletters planned for the coming months.
Since then, they have secured a famous influencer to write for them, bringing in Gen Z users. One opinion piece on antisemitism went viral, accounting for more than 5 percent of all-time visits and seeing pageviews double from September to October.
They have also seen the number of Instagram users rise 46 percent to 17,400, TikTok up to 11,500 and have 12,000 newsletter subscribers.
Overall, they established new channels and have constant growth to date in terms of followers and engagement. Their service provider has informed them that by November, WZ has had up to 3 million users since its launch.
“Everyone is getting comfortable working for target audiences,” said Katharina Schmidt. “Everyone is open minded to new forms of journalism and the mindset is audience-focused in the newsroom. Furthermore, our journalism has made an impact and been extensively quoted.”
They still have work to do and are aiming to increase their reach across all their products and unite them under the WZ brand in 2024. They plan to increase their newsletter subscription by 50 percent, to double the number of listeners to their podcasts and increase the number of visits to articles month to month, all by July 2024.