In what sense is Blitz-news different from typical mobile phone news services?
Satinsky: The SÜDKURIER-Blitz is above all local, though not exclusively. 70 percent of all Blitz-news are local. The rest are about regional news and national politics or sports.

Could you give some examples of events that would certainly appear as Blitz-news?
Satinsky: A contamination of meat, a huge dismissal of employees or a change of a chief executive in an important local company would definitely be important for SÜDKURIER-Blitz. One of the latest news items we sent was a court decision on the upcoming construction of an important road.

Is Blitz-news based on existing German or European mobile news services?
Satinsky: We use the technology of a german service provider. The content is generated by our journalists.

How do readers register in Blitz-news? Is it possible to customize the service?
Satinsky: The customers sign in by telephone or online. There are five different regions to be chosen from the customers. Besides regional information, users of SK-Blitz sports news have the choice of 27 different national, regional or local soccer-leagues.

Is it a paid-for system? How many different SMS messages do you send per day?
Satinsky: For a monthly fee of 2,99 Euro, the user receives approximately 30 messages per month with the most important news in the region. For each sports league he receives the results of the latest match immediately after the final whistle. The number of messages depends on the number of matches taking place. One message costs 39 cents.

What are your target groups?
Satinsky: The service is made for mobile phone enthusiasts. We have a lot of customers who work for public authorities or who are decision makers of companies, sports fans, even other journalists that want to use our information to start own enquiries. Some of our customers are politicians in the Bundestag (the federal parliament of Germany). In order to keep informed about the incidents in their own electoral districts, they use the SK-Blitz.

Is advertising linked to subscribers’ geolocalisation?
Satinsky: The service is free of advertising.

What are your expectations for the number of subscribers?
Satinsky: At the moment, we have several hundred subscribers. By next year, we want to double at least the number of subscriptions.

Which forms of advertising have been successful to promote SK-Blitz?
Satinsky: In order to advertise the services we use outdoor promotions and inpaper promotions. Special daily offers, e.g. for the decisive day of a mayor-election in a town, were also very successfull.

What's the feedback on SK-Blitz?
Satinsky: As it is a push service, there is no feedback system provided. Concerning the amount of users we are very satisfied at the moment.

What is the technology used for Blitz-news? Is the system fully automatic or is there also some human intervention in the process?
Satinsky: The distribution technology of our service provider is automated. Contents are compiled by the journalists themselves.

Is the future of Blitz-news to shift from classical SMS messages to hyper-local video?
Satinsky: The Blitz-news will continue to be distributed on a text basis in the foreseeable future for technical reasons.

Source: Thomas Satinski, editor in chief of Südkurier – interview by Christian Mathea, journalist