Andreas Wiele, director of the Bild Group encouraged publishers not to be afraid of cannibalising their print products by creating a strong digital presence, and not to be afraid of charging for it. If you don't grab your readers online, he warned, someone else will. Wiele was speaking at the WAN-IFRA 9th International Newsroom Summit.

Bild, Germany's leading tabloid and Europe's biggest selling newspaper, has not seen any declines in readership in the last five years despite a thriving web presence. In fact, Wiele said, there is only a 7% overlap between the print and online audience. He explained that all stories are put online after the editorial close each night, except for very rare exclusives which are saved for the paper, "so there is really no reason to pick up the newspaper, but 3 million people still buy it every day."

Wiele also gave the example of one of Bild's magazines, Computer Bild, the circulation of which was declining until a web presence was launched. Once ComputerBild.de was launched, the decline stopped.

Bild has jumped upon user generated content, and launched a 'reader-reporter' effort in July 2007, called 1414. It has since received 650,000 contribution and the paper has printed 13,000 photos, including 1000 alongside headline stories. "Journalists can't be everywhere but our readers are," Wiele said. The paper has even moved into UGC advertising.

Wiele was enthusiastic about the potential for mobile apps to increase digital revenue: "there is now a historic opportunity to correct one of the mistakes made at the birth of online content." Newspapers must find a way to get readers to contribute to the price of producing content, he said, and "we have to give all the credit to apple for putting into place a system whereby people are prepared to pay."

Bild has both an iPhone app and a mobile web portal and the two seem to successfully coexist: the iPhone app has been sold more than 220,000 times and visits to the portal continue to grow, Wiele said. Bearing in mind that there are about 1.5 million iPhones in Germany, that figure is highly significant.

He called on the other publishers at the conference to "dare to ask for money for your digital offerings," urging them not to further teach their readers that content is free. "We make the market," he added. Wiele is convinced that the iPad and other tablet devices will be a big part of the news industry in the near future, which "is not good news for the print industry but for publishers it's great news." Circulation must be counted as both print and digital. Bild is typically a newsstand publication, rather than subscription, but since the arrival of the iPhone, people have been taking out digital subscriptions. The iPhone app is updated once a day, recreating the experience of purchasing the print product, which Wiele believes leads to longer usage time.